The Mystery of the Origin of Chinese Characters]The Yinxu Oracle Bone Script Still Has 1,250 Characters Surviving Today

In the world's four major ancient writing systems, the only ancient Chinese character system represented by the Yinxu Oracle Bone Script has survived thousands of years of evolution and has been carried on to the present day, writing a history of a vast and profound Chinese civilization. From the ancient oracle bone inscriptions to today's Chinese characters, how many Chinese characters are there in a ****?

In recent years, has been committed to the study of ancient Chinese characters, Zhengzhou University, doctoral supervisor Mr. Wang Yunzhi, said their latest research results show that the Shang Dynasty character head has more than 4,100, can be linked to today's characters, still "alive" more than 1,250 characters.

China has always attached great importance to the preparation and publication of word books, the earliest word book is the Eastern Han Dynasty Xu Shen compiled "Shuowen Jiezi", *** collection of 9,353 Chinese characters, "Shuowen Jiezi", the appearance of the Chinese characters written with a unified standard and norms, Xu Shen has been respected by scholars for many generations as a "word saint.

During the North and South Dynasties, the Jade Book, compiled by Gu Ye Wang of Southern Liang, contained 16,917 characters, and was revised during the Tang and Song Dynasties, increasing the number of characters to 22,726. In the Song Dynasty, Ding Du and other compilers compiled the Guangyun, which contained 53,525 characters, and was the dictionary with the largest number of Chinese characters in ancient times. The Kangxi Dictionary, compiled by Zhang Yushu under imperial order in the Qing Dynasty, contained 47,035 characters, and the Chinese Dictionary, compiled by Ouyang Pucun and other compilers after the Xinhai Revolution, contained more than 48,000 characters.

The Chinese Dictionary published in recent years*** contains more than 56,000 Chinese characters, which is the dictionary with the largest number of Chinese characters so far, and can be called the "world's largest" of Chinese dictionaries, and its compilation has been listed as one of the key scientific research projects for the construction of the national culture and for philosophy and social science.

The compilation of the dictionary has been listed as a key scientific research project for national cultural construction and a national key scientific research project for the "Sixth Five-Year Plan", and it has gathered the efforts of more than 300 experts and scholars for more than 10 years.

According to the introduction, at present, the number of people owned by the cultural circle of Chinese characters at home and abroad is as high as 1.5 billion people, and more than 2,100 universities in 85 countries around the world have already opened Chinese language classes. There are also countless overseas primary and secondary schools and social sponsoring organizations, which are also carrying out Chinese language teaching. The number of people learning Chinese abroad, according to the state agency, has reached 30 million.?

Wang Yunzhi said the information processing technology of Chinese characters has also made significant progress, and in order to strengthen the standardization of Chinese language and characters and the in-depth development of information technology, the Ministry of Education and the State Language Commission have recently set up the National Technical Committee for Standardization of Chinese Language and Characters. In the future, through the qualitative and quantitative research on ancient and modern Chinese language and characters and the all-round digitization of the corpus, ? A platform for informatization of ancient and modern Chinese characters will be established in accordance with national norms and standards. Unraveling the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters? The earliest engraved symbols were found 8,000 years ago?

From the ancient legend of Cangjie's creation of characters to the discovery of oracle bones more than 100 years ago, generations of Chinese scholars have been dedicated to unraveling the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters.?

About the origin of Chinese characters, there are all kinds of sayings in ancient Chinese literature, such as "knotting rope", "bagua", "drawings", "book deeds" and so on. Book Deed", etc., the ancient books are also commonly recorded in the Yellow Emperor historian Cang Jie created the legend of the word. Modern scholars believe that the systematic writing tools can not be created entirely by a person, Cangjie if indeed there is a person, should be the text organizer or promulgator.

●The earliest engraved symbols are more than 8,000 years old?

In recent decades, the Chinese archaeological community has released a series of unearthed materials older than the Yinxu oracle bones and related to the origin of Chinese characters. These materials mainly refer to the engraved or painted symbols that appeared on top of pottery in the late primitive society and the early historical society, in addition to a small number of symbols engraved on top of oracle bones, jade, stone tools, and so on. It can be said that they ****together provide a new basis for explaining the origin of Chinese characters.?

By systematically examining and comparing the inscribed symbols on pottery shards unearthed from more than 100 sites of 19 archaeological cultures throughout China, Wang Yunzhi, a doctoral supervisor at Zhengzhou University, concluded that the earliest inscribed symbols in China appeared at the Jiahu site in Maoyang, Henan Province, more than 8,000 years ago.

As a professional worker, he tries to further organize the original materials through scientific means, such as the comprehensive use of archaeology, paleography, comparative philology, scientific and technological archaeology as well as high-tech means and other basic methods, so as to climb and compare the occurrence of Chinese characters before the Shang Dynasty and the development of some of the clue.

However, the situation is not so simple, in addition to the Zhengzhou Shangcheng site, small double bridge site (the site has been found in recent years, more than 10 cases of early Shang Dynasty Zhu Shu ceramic text) of a small amount of material can be directly compared with the order of the Yinxu text, the other symbols before the Shang Dynasty are scattered, each other missing ring more, most of the symbols and with the Shang Dynasty text is not in the right shape. There are also some symbols with heavy regional colors and complex backgrounds.

●The Chinese character system was officially formed in the Central Plains?

Wang Yunzhi believes that the formalization of the Chinese character system should have taken place in the Central Plains. Chinese characters are a writing system that originated independently and do not exist in dependence on any foreign script, but its origin is not a single one, and it has gone through a diversified and long process of integration. Around the time of the Xia Era, the ancestors creatively invented a system of characters and symbols used to record the language on the basis of the experience of widely absorbing and utilizing the earlier symbols, and the system of Chinese characters matured relatively quickly in that era.

It is reported that, from the point of view of excavated writing materials from archaeological excavations, China already had formal writing at least during the Yu Xia period. For example, in recent years, archaeologists once in Shanxi Xiangfen Taosi site of a flat pottery pot, found on the brush Zhu Shu "Wen" character. These symbols belong to the basic form of the early writing system, but it is a pity that such excavated information is still rare.

●Writing first matured during the Shang Dynasty?

As far as the Yin and Shang writing materials are known and seen, there were already many types of writing carriers. The main means of writing at that time, apart from writing on a simple book with a brush, was to inscribe on tortoise shells and animal bones, pottery, jade and pottery cast on bronze. The Shang Dynasty writing materials, with the bones and bronze ritual objects used for divination in Yinxu as the main carriers, are the earliest mature writing found in China so far.

The Shang Dynasty script reflected in the Yinxu period is not only manifested in the large number of characters and rich materials, but also highlighted in the fact that the way of making characters has formed its own characteristics and laws. The basic characters of the Shang Dynasty can be divided into four categories: taking the human body and a part of the human form as the basis of the word; taking the labor creation and the labor object as the basis of the word; taking the image of beasts and domestic animals as the basis of the word; and taking the image of natural objects as the basis of the word. In terms of the cultural connotation of the characters, the objects taken by these early mature characters are quite close to the social life of the ancestors, and have a strong realistic character. At the same time, the content depicted in these glyphs involves all aspects of human beings and nature, and is therefore characterized by a wide range of sources.