Chinese calligraphy : an introduction to its aesthetic and technique : with 6 plates and 155 text illustratons

ORIGIN AND CONSTRUCTION OF CHARACTERS

animals’ foot-prints upon the ground, the shapes of shadows cast by trees, and so on, and engraved rough representations of their forms upon the sticks. Gradually these pictures came to be recognized as elementary characters.

When first picture-characters came into use, human affairs were comparatively simple. Hunting and fighting occupied a large part of men’s lives, and in such events one either lost or won the battle, shot or missed the bird. As life became more complicated, additional characters were invented to meet the new needs of society. Examples of very early picture-writing are not easy to find in existing records. But recently a great many tortoiseshell and animal bones of the Shang-Yin (i #) dynasty (18th century B.c.) were found, bearing picture-characters engraved toformrecords. We can also get some idea of what early characters looked like from bronzes of the same dynasty and of the Chou (fé]) dynasty (12th century B.c.). Here are some examples:

fih (A), Sun: BH WO @ e. Notice how these symbols pick out the solar attributes of roundness and radiating beams.

Yieh(A),Moon:}) (| @ =) &% / YA crescent, a form in which the moon sometimes appears in the sky, and in which it clearly differs from the sun. The character is engraved sometimes as a combination of two lines, sometimes as a single heavy line.

Hsing () Star: Qo 9 吃 av 0 oo € Constellations in the sky have this appearance. Yiin (2), Cloud : if A symbol conveying the sinuous or

curved shape of clouds. [21]