Zhengzhou, July 14 (Xinhua) among the world's four major ancient Chinese characters, only the ancient Chinese character system represented by the oracle bone inscriptions on Yin Ruins, which has evolved for thousands of years, has written a profound history of Chinese civilization. From the ancient oracle bone inscriptions to today's Chinese characters, how many Chinese characters are there?
Wang Yunzhi, a doctoral tutor of Zhengzhou University, who has been devoted to the study of ancient Chinese characters in recent years, said that their latest research results show that there are more than 4100 prefixes of Shang Dynasty characters, and more than 1250 characters that can be connected with today's characters and are still alive.
China has always attached great importance to the compilation and publication of Chinese character books. The earliest Chinese character book is Shuowen Jiezi compiled by Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty, which contains 9353 Chinese characters. The appearance of Shuowen Jiezi makes the writing of Chinese characters have unified standards and norms. Therefore, Xu Shen is respected as the "sage of Chinese characters" by scholars of all ages.
During the northern and Southern Dynasties, the Yupian compiled by King Guye of Nanliang Dynasty received 16917 characters. This book was revised in Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty, and the number of characters increased to 22726. Guangyun, compiled by Ding Du and others in the Song Dynasty, has 53525 characters, which is the dictionary with the largest number of Chinese characters in ancient times. In the Qing Dynasty, the Kangxi dictionary compiled by Zhang Yushu in accordance with the imperial edict collected 47035 Chinese characters. After the revolution of 1911, the Great Dictionary of China compiled by Ouyang Pucun and others collected more than 48000 Chinese characters.
In recent years, the great Chinese dictionary, which contains more than 56000 Chinese characters, is the dictionary with the largest number of Chinese characters so far, and can be called the "world's best" of today's Chinese dictionary. Its compilation has been listed as the national key scientific research project of cultural construction and the national key scientific research project of the sixth five year plan of philosophy and Social Sciences, and has gathered the support of more than 300 experts and scholars More than 20 years of hard work.
According to reports, the population of Chinese character cultural circles at home and abroad is as high as 1.5 billion, and more than 2100 universities in 85 countries have opened Chinese courses. There are also countless overseas primary and secondary schools and social institutions that are also carrying out Chinese teaching. According to the statistics of relevant state institutions, the number of Chinese learners abroad has reached 30 million.
Wang Yunzhi said that significant progress has also been made in the information processing technology of Chinese characters. In order to strengthen the in-depth development of Chinese language standardization and informatization, the Ministry of education and the State Language Commission have recently set up the National Technical Committee for language standardization. In the future, through the qualitative and quantitative research of ancient and modern Chinese language and the all-round digital construction of corpus, an information construction platform of ancient and modern Chinese characters in line with the national standard will be established.
It was 8000 years ago that the earliest symbols were carved to uncover the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters
From the ancient legend of Cangjie's character making to the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions more than 100 years ago, Chinese scholars have been working hard to uncover the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters.
There are various opinions about the origin of Chinese characters in ancient Chinese literature, such as "knot rope", "eight trigrams", "picture" and "Book deed". There are also legends about the creation of Chinese characters by Cangjie, a historian of the Yellow Emperor. Modern scholars believe that systematic writing tools can not be created by one person. If there is a real person, Cangjie should be the writer or publisher of writing.
The earliest symbols are more than 8000 years ago
In recent decades, Chinese archaeologists have published a series of unearthed materials related to the origin of Chinese characters earlier than the oracle bone inscriptions in Yin Ruins. These materials mainly refer to the depiction or painted symbols on pottery in the late primitive society and the early historical society, as well as a small number of symbols on oracle bone, jade, stone and so on. It can be said that they together provide a new basis for explaining the origin of Chinese characters.
Wang Yunzhi, doctoral supervisor of Zhengzhou University, believes that the earliest carved symbols in China appeared at the Jiahu Site in Wuyang, Henan Province, which has a history of more than 8000 years.
As a professional, he tried to make a comprehensive arrangement of these raw materials through scientific means, such as comprehensive use of archaeology, ancient Chinese character construction, comparative philology, scientific and technological archaeology and high-tech means, so as to comb out some clues about the occurrence and development of Chinese characters before Shang Dynasty.
However, the situation is not so simple. In addition to the Xiaozong materials of Zhengzhou Shangcheng site and Xiaoshuangqiao site (which has found more than 10 cases of early Shang Dynasty Zhushu pottery inscriptions in recent years), other pre Shang symbols are scattered and lack each other, and most of them are not in line with Shang Dynasty characters. There are also some symbols with heavy regional color and complex background.
The system of Chinese characters was formally formed in the Central Plains
Wang Yunzhi believes that the formal formation of the Chinese character system should be in the Central Plains. Chinese character is a kind of writing system with independent origin, which does not depend on any foreign language. However, its origin is not single. After multiple and long-term running in, about the time of entering the Xia Dynasty, on the basis of widely absorbing and using the experience of early symbols, the ancestors creatively invented the writing symbol system used to record the language The font system has matured rapidly.
It is reported that according to the unearthed materials, there were official characters in China at least in the Yuxia period. For example, in recent years, archaeologists have found the word "Wen" in calligraphy on a flat pottery pot unearthed from the Taosi site in Xiangfen, Shanxi Province. These symbols belong to the basic configuration of the early writing system. Unfortunately, such unearthed writing information is still rare.
The characters were first mature in Shang Dynasty
As far as the written materials of yin and Shang Dynasties are concerned, there are many kinds of written carriers. At that time, in addition to writing on the bamboo slips with a brush, the other main means of writing were carving on tortoise shells, animal bones, pottery, jade and pottery casting on bronze. Shang Dynasty's writing materials are mainly carried by Oracle Bones and bronze ritual vessels used for divination in Yin Ruins, which is the earliest mature writing found in China so far.
The characters of Shang Dynasty reflected in the Yin Ruins period not only reflected in the large number of characters and rich materials, but also showed that the way of making characters had formed its own characteristics and rules. The structural features of basic characters in Shang Dynasty can be divided into four categories: Taking the physical features of human body and a certain part of human as the basis of character construction; taking the labor creation and labor object as the basis of character construction; taking the images of animals and livestock as the basis of character construction; taking the natural images as the basis of character construction. From the perspective of the cultural connotation of the formation, the objects of these mature and early glyphs are quite close to the social life of the ancestors, and have strong realistic characteristics. At the same time, the content described by these glyphs involves all levels of human and nature, so they also have the characteristics of extensive sources of construction.
