Chapter 13 Section 1 Lishu

Although Xiaozhuan is a relatively neat rectangle, and its structure is composed of evenly rounded lines, it is not convenient to write, and a new, more sloppy font soon appeared among the people.This new typeface first destroys the dignity and neatness of Xiaozhuan, and writes the round and curved lines with square folds.This new font was said to be more popular among low-level officials, servants (zaoli), craftsmen, and slaves at that time, so it was called "Lishu".It is also said that the criminal Cheng Miao (miao second) sorted it out in prison.The official script at the initial stage was called "Gu Li", also known as "Qin Li".On many bamboo slips of the Qin Dynasty unearthed in recent years, the writing is written in Qinli characters (Figure 24).

Lishu was further promoted and popular after the fall of the Qin Dynasty.With the invention of paper and the improvement of writing brushes, after entering the Western Han Dynasty, the official script took on a new look. The outline changed from square to flat, and there were more waves (zhe folds) in the strokes. There is a so-called "silkworm head". Swallowtail" argument.This is the "Han Li", which is also called "Jin Li" as opposed to the ancient Li, and it is also called "Ba Fen".In the Northwest and North China regions of our country, a large number of bamboo slips and slips of the Western Han Dynasty have been unearthed in recent decades, and quite a few of them are written in this kind of modern official script.After the mid-Eastern Han Dynasty, Lishu became an official font recognized by the government.At that time, there were a large number of monumental steles, and the main texts were all written in Jinli script (Figure 25).On the contrary, fonts such as Xiaozhuan can only be used for writing on the forehead of the stele (that is, the title).

Compared with Xiaozhuan, official script has undergone great changes in stroke shape and physical structure. (1) Change the irregular curves and rounded lines of Xiaozhuan into straight and square strokes, so that Chinese characters are further symbolized, and almost all of them lose their pictographic meaning.For example: These characters are pictographic characters with detailed descriptions and vivid images in oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions (in order to save space and facilitate typography, the relevant shapes are omitted).Although Xiaozhuan has been relatively linear and symbolic, it still retains a certain degree of pictographic meaning, such as the claws and tails of "birds", the tails of "swallows" and "fishes", and the legs and tails of "horses"; But in the official script, it has become four dots, and the original shape of the pictogram can no longer be seen. After "clothes" and "boat" are written in Lishu, it is not clear that they look like coats and boats.

Therefore, the official script changed the pictographic characters of Chinese characters into "pictographic characters that are not pictographic", which is a great change in the development history of Chinese characters. (2) Differentiation and merging of the radicals of Xiaozhuan (that is, the parts of the combined characters, such as the pictophonetic symbols or phonetic symbols of pictophonetic characters), which greatly changed the physical structure of Chinese characters.This can be summarized from two aspects: a The same radical in Xiaozhuan changes into different forms with different positions in official script.For example:

In Xiaozhuan, each of the above-mentioned characters has a radical "fire", which is written in the same way regardless of its position, and still retains the shape of a single character; but in official script, it is differentiated into "fire", "fire", "灬", " "," "," "And so on, most of the different shapes can't be seen as a single character. This differentiation can also be said to facilitate writing and arrange the whole word structure, for example: The small seal characters of these characters have parts "

b The different radicals in Xiaozhuan are combined into the same form in Lishu.For example: Among the above three groups of example characters, the first group of official scripts contains the shape of "西(西)", which is different in Xiaozhuan; They are also different; the radicals in the third group of official scripts are all "moon", but they actually belong to "moon", "meat" and "zhou" in Xiaozhuan. (3) The shape of official script is often reduced compared with that of Xiaozhuan.For example: Compared with the shape of Xiaozhuan, the word "Xiang" in Lishu saves "Xiang".

Generally speaking, the shape of Chinese characters has been changed from Xiaozhuan to Lishu, which has greatly simplified and made it easier to write. Chinese characters evolved from Xiaozhuan to Lishu, which is called "Libian".The scribe change is an important turning point in the history of the development of Chinese characters.It ends the ancient writing stage of Chinese characters, and makes Chinese characters enter a more finalized stage.The Chinese characters after the slave change are close to the Chinese characters used today, and we seem to be much easier to recognize than the ancient characters.However, it is precisely because the shape of official script has changed greatly compared with the shape of ancient characters such as oracle bones, bronze inscriptions, and small seal script, many radicals and parts have been deformed or merged, resulting in the weakening or dilution of the direct meaning of many Chinese characters. Go to "see the words clearly".This is an important factor that must be repeatedly emphasized when discussing the meaning of Chinese characters today.