Chapter 2 Section 1 Early Brushes

"Pen" in a broad sense should be said to have existed since human calligraphy and painting "symbols" (the original "picture characters" with both painting and character properties).As far back as the Paleolithic Age, our ancestors painted and carved colored paintings, line drawings, reliefs, etc. in some caves and on rock cliffs, which are petroglyphs.The drawing of these petroglyphs may initially be made of natural objects with a certain function of "pen", or slightly processed semi-natural and semi-artificial objects. These drawing and writing utensils are probably the earliest "pens".

There are some legends and records in history about when artificial brushes started.For example, Liang Tongshu's "Bi Shi" in the Qing Dynasty compiled the "Abandoned Pen Fu" written by Cheng Gongsui, a writer of the Western Jin Dynasty, which said: "'You Cangjie...is concerned about the contract, picks the young hair of autumn, and adds glue to it. Take precautions, tie three bundles and five layers, and build the rhinoceros horn's yuan tube, which belongs to the elephant tooth in the slender front', which is the beginning of the pen from Huangjie."The Huangjie mentioned here is Cangjie, the legendary historian of the Yellow Emperor.Because the "picking autumn hair", "adding glue paint", "knotting three bundles", "building rhino horn", "generating elephant teeth" and so on described in the Fu are obviously not the early methods of making brushes, so it is not the "beginning of writing brushes". However, the historical basis for this legend is insufficient.

Regarding the origin of the brush, there was a popular saying in the past that "Meng Tian made the brush".Meng Tian was a famous general in the Qin Dynasty, and there is such a record in Zhang Hua's "Natural History" of the Jin Dynasty quoted in "Yiwenleiju" of the Tang Dynasty.There are many legends about Meng Tian as the ancestor of making brushes. For example, in Shanlian Town, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, the hometown of Hu brushes, there is a story about Meng Gong (referring to Meng Tian) making brushes, which is called "the ancestor of brushes". , There is also a "Meng Gong Temple" in Shanlian Town.In many places where brushes are produced in our country, there are also "Mengtian Temples".Interestingly, Han Yu in the Tang Dynasty once wrote an article "The Biography of Mao Ying", which described the brush in an anthropomorphic way, and also expressed the above-mentioned views: "Mao Ying, Zhongshan people are also ... because they were sealed in Maodi, ... the eighth generation Sun (need to be exempted) [nou 逨阴]... the one who lives in Dongguo is called 鵕 [jun Jun],... During the time of Qin Shihuang, General Meng Tian was sent to attack Chu in the south, and then Zhongshan, and he hunted big to fear Chu... No horns, no horns, no horns Teeth, a man in brown clothes, with a gap and a long beard... So he hunted the Mao clan, pulled out his hair and returned,... Emperor Qin envoy Tian bestowed Tang Mu on him, and named him Guancheng, named Guanchengzi. It can be seen from this passage that the so-called "Biography of Mao Ying" is the biography of the brush.The "Mao's Clan" who have no horns and teeth, cleft lips and beards, and hairy gills, also known as (need to avoid) and 鵕, refer to rabbits, and the "brown-clothed people" in Chudi, Zhongshan, It was a hare with tawny hairs in Xuanzhou (now Xuanzhou City, Anhui Province) in the Tang Dynasty.Rabbit hairs taken from these preys are processed by pen makers and "bound" to the pen tube to make brushes, which are nicknamed "Guanchengzi".Since then, the brush has the nickname of "Guanchengzi".However, because Meng Tian was mentioned many times in the article, it also gave people the impression that the brush was invented by Meng Tian.So did Meng Tian invent the brush?How is the writing brush produced and developed?These issues should be investigated and explained from the aspects of archaeology and historical documents.

In the Neolithic Age, humans invented pottery.On early Neolithic pottery unearthed from my country's Cishan Cultural Site (now Cishan, Wu'an City, Hebei Province), although the surface of the vessel is mainly plain, there are painted parallel zigzag patterns in some parts.On the pottery at the Dadiwan cultural site (now Dadiwan, Qin'an County, Gansu Province), there are purple-red wide bands painted on the outside of some mouths.The lines of these original paintings are soft, and there are often split forks at the turns and ends. On the same line, there are changes in thickness. Judging from these conditions, they seem to be made of bird feathers, animal feathers or plant fringes. into the original "brush" drawn.There is a passage in the "History of Chinese Ceramics" edited by the China Ceramic Society, which explains this problem very well: "As long as you carefully observe the detailed phenomena and smooth brushwork of certain patterns, you can get an explanation. For example, some patterns There are still traces of brush strokes on it, and some patterns and lines are drawn so smoothly (such as arc lines, swirls, dots, etc.), it can be inferred that a brush was used at that time, otherwise it would be difficult to do it.”

Cishan Culture and Dadiwan Culture, according to radiocarbon dating (radiocarbon dating is a technology that uses the principle of carbon 14 in dead organisms to deduce the age), we know the period they lived in, about BC About 5,000 years ago, that is to say, 7,000 years ago, there were brushes in our country. In addition to paintings and decorations, many symbols were painted and engraved on some painted pottery and black pottery vessels of the Neolithic Age. It seems that the later oracle bone inscriptions were developed from these symbols.In ancient times, people had the concept of turtles as "psychic objects", so they used tortoise shells for divination.During divination, the things to be asked and the results of divination are engraved on oracle bones, which is called "divination words".Oracle bone inscriptions are the most important type of writing in the Shang Dynasty.

How were oracle bone inscriptions written?It was discovered that among the unearthed oracle bones, some had written but not engraved characters, and some had written all the characters but only engraved their straight strokes.From these unfinished conditions, it can be inferred that many oracle bone inscriptions were written first and then carved.In addition, many oracle bone inscriptions have thick, majestic and solemn strokes, comparable to bronze inscriptions. It is hard to imagine that these inscriptions were carved directly with a knife, and they must have been written first and then engraved.All this shows that before the inscriptions were engraved, they were generally written with a brush to be engraved.Regarding this point, there is a similar situation in seal carving steles.For example, "Li Shi Jing" said: "The Book of Stones, written by Cai Yong [yong Yong] Dan, engraved by envoys." The scriptures are then engraved by engravers.In addition, on some pottery tablets unearthed in the Shang Dynasty, characters written with brushes were also found.For example, on a pottery tablet unearthed from the Yin Ruins in Anyang, there is a word "Sacrifice" written in ink, about one inch square, with strong strokes and sharp edges.This is another evidence that brushes were indeed used at that time.

Guo Moruo said it well in the article "The Dialectical Development of Ancient Characters": "Needless to say, the Yin Dynasty was using brushes. In addition to knives and brushes, there were also brushes. This comes from the word 'Yu' or the word 'Yu' in the characters." The characters in the radicals can also be proved. Later, Dong Zuobin, an archaeologist in Taiwan Province, also said in his book "Fifty Years of Oracle Bone Inscriptions" when talking about the issue of oracle bone inscriptions: From the beginning to the end, the strokes of the brush converge and are very clear, so it can be concluded that the calligraphy of the Yin Dynasty was indeed written with a fine brush."

We inferred from the decorations and handwriting of the ancient remains above that there were already brushes as far back as the Yin, Shang and even the Neolithic Age.Let's take a look at some brushes found in archaeological excavations.Historically, due to the lack of archaeological excavations and the perishability of writing brushes, it is difficult to preserve them, so the physical objects of writing brushes were rarely found for a long time.In recent years, with the development of archaeology, many writing brushes have been unearthed through extensive excavation. The earliest surviving writing brush in my country is a writing brush unearthed in June 1954 in a Chu tomb in the late Warring States Period in Zuojiagong Mountain, Changsha City, Hunan Province.The pen barrel is made of bamboo, 18.5 cm long and 0.4 cm in diameter.The tip of the pen is high-quality rabbit arrow hair (that is, Zihao), 2.5 cm long.There is a bamboo tube pen case, 23.5 cm long.This pen is somewhat different from the current brush. One is to wrap the brush hair around one end of the rod, wind it with a thin thread, and paint the outside to make it firm, instead of inserting the brush hair into the rod cavity.This is similar to the situation described by Cai Yong of the Eastern Han Dynasty in "Bi Fu" that "cut asparagus bamboo for tubes and add lacquer silk to wrap it".The second is that the usage of the pen cap is different from the present one. The pen cap is very long, and the writing brush was unearthed as a whole in the pen cap.

Due to the discovery of the above-mentioned Chu brush objects, it is undoubtedly proved that at least as early as the Warring States Period, there were already brushes, which also clarified the question of whether the brush was invented by Meng Tian.Cui Bao’s "Gu Jin Zhu" in the Jin Dynasty questioned Meng Tian’s claim that he invented the brush: “Niu Heng asked: ‘Since there was a book contract in ancient times, there should have been a brush, so why is it called Meng Tian made a brush?’ The answer was: 'Meng Tian made Qin pen ears'." In the "Beginner's Notes" compiled by Xu Jian and others in the Tang Dynasty, he even held a negative view on Meng Tian's pen creation, such as saying: "There were pens before Qin..." Furthermore, Song Ge Li Fang's "Rhyme of Yangqiu" quoted "Natural History" and said: "Meng Tian made a brush with fox fur as the heart and rabbit fur as the vice. But it is easy to use." According to this statement, the brushes made by Meng Tian have been made of various materials, and they belong to the type of writing brushes such as Jianhao, and the manufacturing methods and techniques are also relatively complicated.This kind of hair brush cannot be a primitive or early brush.Therefore, some people say that the so-called "Zao" in "Meng Tian Zaobi" refers to the "zao" of manufacturing, not the "zao" of creation, that is, it does not mean invention. It seems that this kind of statement is more reasonable.Although Meng Tian was not the inventor of the brush, he improved the technique of making the brush and made contributions in the history of culture.

The brushes of the Qin Dynasty in Mengtian's time have been discovered in kind. In December 1975, three writing brushes were unearthed from Qin Tomb No. 11, Shuihudi, west of Chengguan, Yunmeng County, Hubei Province.The lower ends of these writing brushes are thicker, hollowed out to form a cavity, and the nib is inserted into the cavity, which is very similar to modern writing brushes.This structure can better overcome the shortcoming that the pen tip is easy to split because the brush hair is bound on the periphery of the pen holder and there is a gap in the center, which is a great progress in the history of pen making.

The upper ends of the barrels of these three brushes are all sharpened, and it seems likely that they belong to what is called "hairpin pen" in history.Regarding the hairpin pen, "Hanshu" said: "(Zhang) An Shiben held the 橐 [tuo camel] hairpin pen and served Emperor Xiaowu for decades." It is convenient to use the writing brush when taking notes, sharpen the end of the brush, insert it on the hair bundle or the crown of the hat, and it is easy to take and put away.Furthermore, the hairpin pen is also a kind of crown decoration in ancient times.Although this is a matter of the Han Dynasty, the Han Dynasty inherited the Qin system, and the above-mentioned Qin pen with a sharpened tip should be a "hairpin pen". Significant reforms were carried out in the writing of the Qin Dynasty. First, the writing was unified and changed from large seal to small seal;The production of Qin pens has been relatively advanced, and their functions are relatively complete, which is in line with the reform of writing and the development of culture and art at that time.