A brief analysis of the changes in the writing of Wu Jianhua in the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou
Qiu Shudong. From the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Jin Dynasty, it was an important period of simplification and differentiation of Chinese character calligraphy, during this period, the seal and the subordinate began to fade out of daily life, and the line, grass and regular script gradually matured and became an important book style. In the process of simplification and deformation of seals and subordinates, Zhangcao, as a transitional calligraphy, inherits the penmanship of seals and subordinates, lays a solid foundation for mature lines, regular lines and grasses, and carries out necessary exploration and improvement in dot painting and structure.
In 1996, more than 100,000 pieces of Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms were unearthed in Zoumalou Street, Wuyi Square, Changsha City, Hunan Province, with unique shape and rich content. This is one of the largest number of Three Kingdoms slips found since the 20th century, it is not only an important Wu archival material during the Three Kingdoms period, recording the economic, cultural, social life and other aspects of the content at that time, but also has important text and calligraphy value, Zhang Xiancheng believes that the text in the Wu slips of the Zouma Lou is a sign of the formation of regular script (Zhang Xiancheng, "On the Research Value of the History of Chinese Characters in the Silk Slips"). There are not many calligraphy materials of the Three Kingdoms period that have survived, and most of them are stone carvings and later generations, and most of them are concentrated in the Wei State.
Among the more than 100,000 pieces of Wu Jian, there are many fine cursive scripts (here Wu Guocao Jian refers to the fact that the font has the meaning of Xingcao, but it cannot be clearly defined as the early Xingshu or Zhangcao Jian), and these fonts that eliminate some of the Lishu wavy strokes and accept the influence of cursive script are called Xinliti by Mr. Qiu Xigui. Through the statistics and analysis of the grass writing characters in the Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou, and compared with the mature Zhang Cao represented by Han Li, the "Urgent Chapter", and the mature Jin Cao represented by the Erwang, we can roughly see the evolution process of Zhang Cao, which is not only the evolution in the longitudinal time clue, but also the standardization process of Chinese characters in the same region. This paper selects 30 mature Han Lili (mainly taken from the "Zhang Qian Tablet", "Ritual Tablet" and "Yiying Tablet"), the common characters in Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou and Huangxiang Zhangcao "Urgent Chapter", and sets up several parameters of Yanwei, Reverse Front Writing, Lianbi, Yingdai, and Commonly Used Grass Symbols in Later Generations, in an attempt to ** the overall characteristics of folk grass writing in Wu during the Three Kingdoms period, and summarize the development and evolution process of Chinese character grass writing.
1. Stroke changes
Mr. Qiu Zhenzhong believes that "the requirements for the development of fonts in any era are simple and fast on the basis of easy recognition". As a kind of folk calligraphy, in order to meet the needs of characters, the font change characteristics of Zoumalou Sanguo Wu Jian are first reflected in the change of strokes, including the change of the number of strokes and the change of stroke form. At this time, the number of strokes is affected by the cursive writing and the simplification of the glyphs, which is manifested by a gradual decreasing trend. The 30 characters selected, in "Cao Quan Tablet" and "Shi Chen Tablet", a total of 307 pen shapes, in the Zouma Lou Wu Jianzhong pen shape reduced to 232, and in the standard chapter grass "Urgent Chapter", there are only 156 pen shapes left. It can be clearly seen from the number of pen shapes that the Wu Jian script of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou exists as a transitional font in the formation stage of cursive script, at this time the cursive writing of Chinese characters should still be in the process of evolution, and has not fully formed the law and stereotype, and the official specification of the cursive glyph has not been fully popularized, but it is undeniable that the folk calligraphy represented by the Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou has begun to consciously move towards grass and simplification, and laid a certain foundation for the development of cursive script in the future.
From the point of view of the shape of the strokes, Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms also reflects the characteristics of connecting the previous and the next. The silkworm head and goose tail - that is, the reverse front of the pen and the wave stroke is one of the most important characteristics of Lishu, and this feature is also reflected in the sketch of Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou. The collected 30 words appeared 24 times in the mature Han Dynasty, according to the convention of the official book "geese do not fly", the proportion of the wild goose tail in the selection of the sample is about 80%, and in the Three Kingdoms Wu Jian, the frequency of the wild goose tail plummeted, only 1 time, and even less than the frequency of the emperor's "Urgent Chapter". In the selection of Han monuments, almost all the strokes are reversed, and in the selection of Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou, there are a total of 21 times of reverse strokes, accounting for only 8 of all strokes. 4%, which drops to 2% in "Rush Chapter". However, in the selection of Wu Jian, Shunfeng Qi pen appears in large numbers, and more and more obvious strokes appear in cursive scripts, and the gestures can be seen from the pen strokes, showing a strong sense of writing and dynamics, which is more convenient and faster than official writing. Although there are some words in the Three Kingdoms Wu Jian have not yet gotten rid of the influence of the official book, such as the form of the word "year" is many, but most of them retain the glyph and penmanship of the official book to a great extent, and the three horizontal in the four horizontal are all written against the front, compared with the writing of the word "year" in the "Urgent Chapter" (Table 1), it seems that the simplification is insufficient, perhaps because of the large number of Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of the Walking Horse Building, the long time span of writing, and the difference in the age of writing has led to a number of various forms in the evolution of the glyphs, which is the embodiment of the dynamic process of font evolution.
Not only the decrease in the number of silkworm heads and goose tails can reflect that the Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou is in the transition period of literary change, but also the morphological change of the wild goose tail in the Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou also has this characteristic. Wu Jian** of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou has some incomplete goose tail pen shapes, such as from the two words in Table 2, it can be seen that the word "rice" draws the tail of the goose and the right side of the word "Hu" are all from the upper right, and there is a wave picking action, but the lower right press is insufficient, and the wave is not obvious. The change of the Caohua Jian's strokes on the waves in Wu Jian in Zoumalou can be regarded as the disintegration of the mature Han Dynasty, in which the remains of the strokes of the waves and Zangfeng are also a manifestation of the incomplete disintegration.
2. Structural changes
1.Reflections are linked to the brush, and the strokes tend to be reduced. Wu Jian** of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou has shown a very important pen-shaped feature of cursive writing - the penmanship of connecting two or more pen shapes to write together, breaking the pattern of separating the seal and the pen, and the breath is coherent and the writing is enhanced. Compared with the situation that there is almost no continuous pen and few shadow bands in the mature Han Dynasty, the shadow bands between the strokes in the sample characters of Wu Jianxuan of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou appear 17 times, and the continuous pen appears 32 times, which is close to the "Urgent Chapter" In 38 times, such changes reflect that people at that time in the writing process of writing efficiency and beauty have higher requirements, no longer satisfied with the writing of one stroke, but seek to write quickly, follow the swing law of the brush when writing, and have a stronger understanding of the nature of the brush, give up the independence of the pen, and turn to the coherence of the pen. In the Three Kingdoms Wu Jian, there has been an obvious downward left strike, consciously connected with the next stroke, as shown in Table 3, the upper horizontal of the three characters of "thin, so, six" have been out of the stroke, completely changing the Han Lizhong horizontal painting habit of the upper right wave stroke, but conform to the gesture, to the mature Zhangcao strokes.
Through comparison, it is not difficult to find that the form of the Lianbi in the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou Wu Jian also shows diversity, and gradually moves closer to the mature chapter grass. From Table 4, it can be analyzed that these ligatures include but are not limited to vertical strokes and horizontal strokes, such as the vertical strokes of the character "亻" and horizontal strokesThe concatenation between the continuous downward strokes, such as the three concatenation of the upper left part of the word "Hu" is a single stroke;Horizontal strokes connect diagonal strokes, such as the connection between the last horizontal stroke of the character "yellow" and the lower left point;The conjunctions between dot paintings, such as the contiguous writing of the character "氵" in "Han";The continuous writing between the vertical strokes, such as the "small character bottom" at the bottom right of "county" is connected as a horizontal one;The hook goes up and is connected to the dot painting, such as the vertical hook of the word "de" and the dot painting.
When the strokes are coherent, the strokes are connected or merged, break the rules of the seal and the subordinate, so that the strokes can be connected with each other, so that several strokes have the possibility of forming a whole, in this case, the conventional, can represent the parts and the side of the symbol to appear conditionally, "generally use the first and last strokes with characteristics of the reserved word, the strokes in the middle of the word are reduced and exempted, and the side is replaced by simplified parts" (Guo Shixian, "On the Calligraphy Form of Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Changsha Zoumalou" There is also a foundation for the establishment of cursive and line calligraphy, which undoubtedly plays a great role in promoting the development of line cursive. Folk writers tried to merge redundant strokes and simplify complex parts, and symbols that could represent partial or glyph parts were born. With the gradual deepening of grassification, Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou has some rudiments of grass methods, some of which have developed to the real maturity of "Urgent Chapter", and some of them can still be seen in the mature grass of later generations. For example, in Table 5, the bottom of the word "heart", the writing in Wu Jianzhong can already see the clues of simplifying according to the brushwork, "辶" omits the first point, and the remaining strokes are combined into a stroke and becomes a circle, although the word "so" has not formed a mature cursive method, but the overall form and brushwork are similar to the "Urgent Chapter".
2.The gestures are coherent, and the glyph changes from horizontal to vertical. In Wu Jianzhong, the coherence of the gestures makes the phenomenon of the downward trend reflected in the glyph more and more obvious, following the flow of the gesture, changing the horizontal to vertical, breaking the posture characteristics of the horizontal extension of the Lishu, and extending the glyph vertically on the basis of the continuous strokes, as shown in Table 6, the right part of the word "Han" is inclined to the right upward, and there is an obvious relationship between the five horizontals, and the glyph is much longer than the Lishu. In terms of quantity, there are 6 characters with a longitudinal length greater than the horizontal length of 30 sample characters in the Han Dynasty, with a proportion of 20%, and the proportion rises to about 67% in the Wujian cursive script of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou, and 20 characters show a longitudinal form.
The form of Chinese characters changes from horizontal to vertical or square, which is mainly reflected in the change of stroke length and the change of stroke inclination angle in all directions. In the Han Dynasty, there is usually a horizontal stroke to assume the role of the main pen, and to reflect its importance with a more prominent length, as in Table 7, the first stroke of the word "hundred" is a horizontal stroke, and the length is almost twice the length of the longitudinal stroke in the word, and in the Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou, the first horizontal stroke has tended to be equal to the length of the vertical stroke below, and the whole glyph naturally turns from a horizontal trend to a square, and this change continues to the chapter grass "hundred". This situation does not occur by chance, but is a change that often occurs in the process of italization and grassing. This is not only a change in the trend of the glyph, but also a change in the main pen of the font, the Wujian text of the Three Kingdoms of the Three Kingdoms does not highlight a certain stroke like the Han Li, but pays more attention to the coordination of the whole character and the coherence of the stroke, and this change provides a prerequisite for the subsequent chapter grass stereotype. The long horizontal on the right side of the word "time" in the official book is used as the main pen, and its length is about the same as the longitudinal length of the whole word, but the three kingdoms of the three kingdoms of the zouma are directly shortened to the short horizontal of the same length as the upper and lower two horizontals, and there is the meaning of downward conjunction, the "time" in the chapter grass will be directly omitted from the "soil" in the upper right, but the long horizontal goose tail of the official book is retained, and the overall character posture is almost the same as that of the three kingdoms of the three kingdoms of the zouma building;Han Li, Wu Jian and the "Fu" character in the chapter in the longitudinal stroke length is basically the same, the main gap in the right "inch" part of the horizontal strokes, not only the length of the shortening, but also the change of dot painting, from the Han Li in the longer almost horizontal dot painting, into the three kingdoms of the Three Kingdoms Wu Jian and Zhang Cao in the short dot painting, changed the aspect ratio of the glyph.
3.The posture changes, and the spacing between the horizontal structures of the glyphs continues to expand. Not only has the length of the horizontal strokes changed, but the characters in the Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou basically extended the short longitudinal Han Li strokes, and the presence of vertical, vertical and vertical points in the text gradually increased, or the distance between the horizontal structures in the glyphs continued to expand, which was also one of the factors for the change of the font style. As shown in Table 8, the word "if" and the "right" below are almost close together in the Han Dynasty, while in the Zoumalou Wu Jiancao character, the "艹" becomes smart, and the distance between the "right" part and the lower part is expanded, and the "right" character is still long and horizontal, and the upper space of the "if" in the chapter grass is further increased, and the center of gravity of the whole character is shifted downward, and the whole character tends to be square. The middle distance of the word "cang" in Wu Jianzhong is much larger than that of Han Li, supplemented by the change of the angle of the oblique strokes on the upper part and the left, the whole glyph changes from horizontal to longitudinal, and the four horizontal parts of the middle are directly merged into a horizontal in the chapter grass, but even if the horizontal strokes are reduced, the longitudinal space is not compressed, and the body is still square and long. In the shape of the Hanli character, the last stroke occupies a large space, and the middle part is squeezed together, while in the Wujian grass character of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou, the last stroke becomes stable, and the horizontal parts are arranged more balanced, and even the upper half occupies more space.
4.The angle changes, and the strokes change from horizontal to vertical. The change of the angle of different strokes is also one of the important reasons for the change of the glyph posture. The diagonal strokes in the Han Dynasty are mostly drawn horizontally and extended for a long time, or the longitudinal strokes are written horizontally. In the Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou, these strokes changed from horizontal to vertical writing, and affected the italization and grass of later generations. As shown in Table 9, the word "also" in the word "辶" in the Han Dynasty extends to the lower right, elongates the horizontal posture of the whole word, and the tilt angle is about 30, when it develops to the Three Kingdoms Wu Jian, not only the painting becomes shorter, the tilt angle also tends to be close to 0, and it becomes a flat short stroke, which greatly weakens the horizontal trend of the font, and the chapter grass is even slightly inclined to the upper right, completely changing the trend in the Lishu. The word "Fu" in the mature Han Li, the left side of the vertical skimming to the left side of the flat to launch a horizontal stroke, in the Three Kingdoms of the Three Kingdoms Wu Jiancao writing to give up this penmanship, but directly become a vertical apostrophe, the end is attached to the upper pick stroke, and the "亻" strokes are connected, the left and right directions shorten the stroke, highlight the longitudinal strokes, so that the glyph tends to be square. The word "Min" is more typical, the painting is pulled out to the right, and the length of the main part on the left is basically equal, at this time, the word "Min" in Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou and the word "Min" in the chapter grass for the transformation of the painting is different, the Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of the Zoumalou will make the painting more gentle, shorten the length, highlight the vertical painting on the left, so that the glyph turns from horizontal to vertical, and the "Min" in the chapter grass is to make the angle of the painting more oblique, so that it changes from horizontal strokes to vertical strokes, and elongates the vertical trend of the glyph.
3. Changes in the rules and regulations
As mentioned above, the phenomenon of the shadow with the pen in the cursive writing of the Three Kingdoms of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou gradually increased, which affected the posture and structure of the font and created some cursive symbols. In fact, the relationship between the characters also emerged, and the writer was not satisfied with breaking the independence between the strokes, and also destroyed the independence of the characters, and connected two or more words. At this time, the act of writing is no longer limited to a single character as a whole, but tends to regard a group of characters or a simple character as a whole. This is completely different from the Han Dynasty period of the wave strokes to bring the independent writing effect of the words, the writers began to look at the chapter, the breath between the words became more and more coherent, the layout also broke the rules of the style, and gradually appeared between the words interspersed and echoed the relationship, sparse and dense.
It should be seen that Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou broke the chapter of the horizontal layout of the official book. It should be known that the horizontal layout of the Lishu relies on the parallel aesthetic orientation, the strokes of the Lishu are longer than the longitudinal, the oblique paintings are also close to the horizontal paintings, and the horizontal strokes of a word tend to be parallel, coupled with the lack of reflection relationship between the characters of the Lishu and the words, the writing of each word is to start again, resulting in the regular layout of the Lishu. However, the situation in the Three Kingdoms Wu Jian has changed, at this time, the font is more serious, the connection between the strokes increases, breaking the parallel relationship between the space inside and outside the word, and the aesthetic orientation at this time has changed from normative parallel to flexible and natural.
It is not difficult to find that more and more attention has been paid to handwriting, which directly leads to the diversity of chapter forms and obvious differences in the Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou. There are not only those that are relatively sparse, but also those that are closely connected with each other, and pay great attention to the interspersed relationship between words. Compared with the Eastern Han Dynasty Lishu Jian unearthed in 2004 in Changsha, Hunan Province, the same is the Jianzhu ink, the latter is earlier than the former, and it is found that the spatial relationship between the two is completely different, and the root of this obvious change lies in the continuous development of Chinese character cursive writing and the evolution of fonts, and the strengthening of the relationship between strokes and between characters.
The surname of the calligrapher is very far apart, and the name and verbs, such as school, province, and acceptance, are very close, and even combined into one word, as listed in Table 10. In general, the first name will be closer to the first name, and the first name will be separated from the verb. The typical payment of Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou should not be limited by the length of the bamboo slips, because this mode of writing also appears in multiple slips, which can basically be regarded as a common payment format at that time. This not only provides us with a sample of the simple inscriptions of the Three Kingdoms period, but also shows the ingenuity of the calligraphers at that time for the arrangement of chapters.
IV. Conclusion
Generally speaking, as a southern folk handwriting style during the Three Kingdoms period, Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms can not only reflect the characteristics of the font reform period, but also have the commonality of folk calligraphy. The font of Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou is the font between the evolution of Lishu and cursive, and the transition is its most important and basic feature, the gradual reduction of the number of strokes and the gradual demise of the reverse wave all reflect the abandonment of the cursive font to the Lishu, but the remaining Lishu brushwork reflects the strong influence of the Lishu;The increase of the continuous pen ribbon reflects that the font of the Three Kingdoms Wu Jian of the Zoumalou gradually has the most distinctive characteristics of cursive writing, and these even the brushwork bands make the strokes in the Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of the Zoumalou to be reduced and merged, revealing that the weeding symbols used in later generations began to form, and the glyphs moved from horizontal to vertical. However, it is undeniable that at this time, it is still in the stage of exploration of cursive symbolization, and most of the simplified writing on the side has not yet formed a standard;The attention to the painting tape greatly affected the chapter method, breaking the chapter layout of the Han Dynasty's official calligraphy, and moving towards the stage of personalized consciousness and difference of the chapter law.
It should also be noted that the randomness and individuality of folk calligraphy are clearly reflected in the Wu Jian of the Three Kingdoms of Zoumalou. Due to the relatively large span of time, the large number of calligraphers, and the lack of standardization of cursive writing, the same characters present different forms in different simplified characters, the number of strokes and structure may change, and different simplified characters also have different layouts, and may even be very different. At this time, the emphasis on readability was also surpassed by handwriting, and the calligrapher was more concerned about handwriting, resulting in a situation where the spacing between words was too small or the writing style was more confusing, and the reading function was neglected, which was in stark contrast to the normative cursive writing such as the "Urgent Chapter".