Printing is a copying process. Its copying content and copying objects are nothing more than texts and images. Among them, the copying of texts is more, especially in Chinese ancient society. Therefore, the generation, development, and specification of words are crucial to the invention and improvement of printing.
The first section of text production
In the history of mankind, the invention of any process technology—especially the major process technology—is dependent on the society's demand for it and the material conditions. Printing is no exception. The reality is that the invention of printing depends on the needs of the society in terms of culture and life for the printing and transfer reproduction. The realization of this demand is based on the generation, development, and specification of words, and the raw materials for printing. It is premised on the availability of material conditions within. In other words, if there is no production, development, and specification of text as a target of print reproduction, although people need printing, although printing can be applied in the field of textiles, the perfection and development of printing is also difficult and slow. It is the generation, development, and specification of texts that have led to the need for society to print and copy objects. The birth and development of writing and printing have indissoluble bound to promote and restrict each other.
Chinese text is separated from the picture and transformed. These early writings and drawings were created by people in long-term production practices for the need to record and disseminate information and exchange ideas. There is a natural and inevitable evolution here. When we explore the origins of the text, it naturally comes into contact with the original, recorded, and exchanged thoughts that led to the production of the words, from the knots, seals, and drawings.
First, from the knot rope, engraved to the picture text
At the beginning of human society, productivity was extremely low. For the sake of survival, people had to unite and use primitive and primitive production tools to fight nature. In the struggle, language was born in exchange for ideas and information. But the language is fleeting, it cannot be preserved, it cannot be transmitted to a place further away, and some information that needs to be preserved and spread to more distant places cannot be remembered by the memory of the human brain alone. Thus, the original note-taking method - "knot rope notes" and "catch notes" came into being.
1ã€Knot rope note
Before the writing of the text, people used a variety of note methods to help memorize the memory. Among them, the knots and the engraved knots were used more often. In ancient Chinese literature, there are many records about knot-knots. In the period of the Warring States Period in the works of the Warring States period, "The Book of Changes," said: "The ancient knot was tied up and ruled, and the saints of the later generations were able to use the book." Zheng Xuan, a Han dynasty man, also said in his Zhouyi Note: " The ancients had no words, knots were ropes, events were big, and their ropes were tied up; things were small and their ropes were summed up.†Li Dingyi’s “Book of Changes†quoted in the “Nine Houses of Yi†also said: “The ancients have no words, they have The matter of vows, big things, big ropes, small things, small ropes, how many knots, how many things are carried out, and how they perform each other, are also sufficient to deal with each other.†This is about knots and ropes. It is quite clear and concrete.
2ã€Inscription
The purpose of the seal is mainly used to record the number. Liu Xi of the Han dynasty said in the book “Release Names and Interpretations†that “deeds, inscriptions, and inscriptions are also known.†A clear explanation is that the deed is a moment, and the purpose of the engrave is to help remember the number. Because people make the contractual relationship, the number is the most important, and it is also the most likely cause of disputes. Therefore, people use the engraved method to symbolize the number with certain lines and engrave them on bamboo or wood as a "contract" for both parties. This is the ancient "deed." Later, people separated the deed from the middle and divided it into two halves. With regard to the case of the ancient seal, “Lie Zi Shuan Fu†recorded a story in which there was a Song country man who found a lost contract on the road. He returned to his home and hid his possession and secretly counted it. The number of teeth engraved on the account of the number of teeth that they represent is very happy. I can't help but say to my neighbor: "I'm going to get rich soon. "This story shows that the ancient deeds were numbered and used mainly as evidence of debt. Figure 3-1 is a graph of the skeletons of the Yangshao site unearthed in Zhoujiazhai, Xining County, Gansu Province.
Knots, notes, and other similar note-taking methods are found in different peoples around the world. From the beginning of the Song Dynasty in China, the south still had knots and notes. Peru is particularly famous in South America. Some peoples can use the colors and knots of the ropes to write down certain things accurately. Figure 3-2 is a graphic of a rope knot note used by the Incas of Peru.
As a knot note of the original note method, whether it is knotted with a rope or crosswise with multiple ropes, in the final analysis, it is just a simple concept of expressing and recording numbers or orientations. It is an ideographic form. . It can be regarded as a gestation phase before the text is produced, but it cannot be transformed into text, and it is not a text. Because it can only help people to remember certain things, but not the exchange of ideas, they do not have the attributes of language exchange and recording. Therefore, knot-knots cannot be developed into text.
3, picture text
Knots and notes are, after all, primitive, very simple, and rough notes, with a small range of notes and poor accuracy. People have to use some other methods to help remember and express ideas. Painting led to the production of text. In "Chinese Philology," Mr. Tang Lan said: "The production of the text is very natural. Tens of thousands of years ago, people of the Paleolithic era already had good paintings. These paintings were probably animals and portraits. This is The predecessor of the word.†However, the role of the picture in the translation of text into text is only possible after “having a more general and more extensive languageâ€. For example, only at this time someone has painted a tiger. When everyone sees it, he will call it "tiger"; when he draws an elephant, it will be called "image" when everyone sees it. Over time, everyone agrees that a picture similar to the above mentioned "tiger" and "elephant" is used between the picture and the text. With the passage of time, more and more pictures of this kind have been drawn, and paintings have become less realistic. This picture gradually shifted toward the text, eventually leading to separation from the picture. In this way, the picture is divided into homes and divided into original realistic pictures and picture texts that become text symbols. The pictorial text further developed into hieroglyphs. As the “Chinese Philology,†said: “The text is in the picture, the initial text is a picture that can be read out, but the picture may not always be able to read. Later, the text and the picture gradually diverge, the difference is gradually significant, the text is no longer It is a picture, but a written one.†And “the technique of writing does not require a realistic depiction, as long as the feature is written out, it is generally good that people can understand it.†This is the original text.
Regarding the origin of the text, there were many legends written by Cang Yi during the Warring States Period. For example, in the case of "Xunzi Jiemian", it says: "A lot of good book writers are public and one of them is a writer." "Lu Chunqiu Jun Shou" says: "Sui Zhong is a car, and Chang Cang is a book..." Chinese text was created by Cangjie.
As for the history of Cangrang, there was a legend similar to myth. It was said that Cangwu was the official of the Yellow Emperor. After the Yellow Emperor united with China, he felt that using the method of knot rope was far from satisfying the requirements. , making a word. Thus, Cangwu built a house on a high stage on the south bank of the Lishui River at that time and devoted himself to making words. However, he thought hard and thought for a long time without making any words. Coincidentally, one day, when Cangwu was thinking about it, I saw a phoenix flew up in the sky, and a piece of something tumbling down in his mouth fell down. He just fell in front of the barn, picked it up, and saw a hooves on it. In India, you can identify whether it is a hoof of a wild beast, and ask a hunter who happened to come. The hunter looked and said: "This is a hoofed hoof seal. Unlike the hoofprints of other beasts, the hoofprints of other wild beasts I knew at a glance." The words of the hunters were very inspiring. He thought that everything has its own characteristics. If you can grasp the characteristics of things and draw pictures, everyone can know. This is not the word? Since then, Cangyi has paid attention to carefully observe the characteristics of various things, such as the day. Moon, stars, clouds, mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, as well as various kinds of birds, animals, and artifacts. According to their characteristics, they draw figures and create many pictographs. This way, over time, the time is long, and there are many more characters in the warehouse. Cangwu dedicated these pictographic characters created by him to the Yellow Emperor. Huang Di was very happy. He immediately called the Kyushu chiefs and allowed Cang Chen to pass on these words to them. Then the pictograms began to be applied. In order to commemorate the power of Cangjie, the descendants named the place of Nancang in Xinzheng County, Henan Province as the "Phoenix Bookstore." During the Song Dynasty, a temple was built here and named "Fengtai Temple."
Although these are all legends and are not sufficient evidence, their connotations are not without reason. This is the reason why texts come from pictures. The earliest words are picture texts. As for the generation of words, to look at the problem from the perspective of historical materialism, or to make a realistic and objective analysis of the production of Chinese characters, it is not difficult to see that words are an inevitable product of a certain stage of development in human society, and are primitive humans in the long term. It is gradually formed and evolved in the production practice. It cannot be created by a single person. Perhaps Cang Ying once made the earliest collation in the history of Jizhong's paintings and it is unknown. As for the era in which Cang Ying wrote books, which is the birth of letters, there are many opinions in history. The more unified view is that "Cangwu is the official of the Yellow Emperor." Cang Ying made the word when the Yellow Emperor was in the twenty-sixth century BC. Archaeological and bibliographic records indicate that at least four or five thousand years ago, Chinese characters, Chinese characters, were born and matured.
Second, early stereotypes - Oracle
From the advent of Chinese characters, Chinese characters have gone through the early drawings and writings, oracle bone script, ancient script, regular script, official script, regular script, running script, and cursive script, as well as various types of printed fonts gradually derived from the invention of typography to meet printing requirements. The course of development. Among them, the oracle bone script was regarded as the earliest stereotypical text in China.