Although their
shapes are very different from the characters of today, being less uniform in
shape and more picture-like, oracle bone characters were already fully
developed, with semantic-phonetic compounds as well as the simple
pictographs and ideographs. Therefore,
there must have been precursors to oracle bone characters, which represented
the first attempts at Chinese writing.
Oracle bones inscriptions were
discovered only a little more than 100 years ago. In 1899, these bones surfaced in the Anyang area of Henan
province in central China, the ancient capital of the Shang dynasty. The local peasants, intrigued about the
markings on these ancient looking bones, called them dragon bones and had used
them as medicine. Soon they
caught the attention of a scholar of Chinese writing, who collected over 5000
pieces of these bones. Now the deciphering
and study of oracle bone inscriptions is a major discipline in itself.
Before the oracle bone inscriptions were
discovered, the oldest writing for a long time was the bronze
inscriptions, which were discovered almost two thousand years ago at the height
of the Han dynasty, from which the Chinese ethnicity and Chinese characters got their
names (汉人 and 汉字)respectively。 Bronze inscriptions 金文 jinwen ‘metal writing’ are
characters imprinted on bronze vessels used for ceremonial purposes. They are about 1000 years younger than oracle bone
inscriptions,being from
Zhou dynasty about three thousand years ago.
Seal characters followed (so-called because of its use on seals) in the Qin dynasty (221-206 BC). There are two styles 大篆dazhuan ‘greater
seals’ and 小篆xiaozhuan ‘lesser
seals’.
Another major stage in
the evolution of the Chinese writing is the appearance of隶书lishu ‘clerkly style’ in the Qin dynasty(221-206
BC). The style got its name from the
official scribes that adopted this style of writing. Due perhaps to the change of the writing instrument, this style
is more stylized, more uniform in shape and also closer to the present
form. A major historical figure
connected to this stage of the evolution of Chinese writing is the first
emperor 秦始皇Qinshihuang,
who, in his efforts to unify the country, ordered the standardization of
Chinese characters, as well as weight and measure.
The most important study of Chinese
characters 说文解字Shuowenjiezi
‘exegesis of characters’ was written in the Eastern Han dynasty by许慎Xu
Shen(58-147 AD). 说文解字was the first work to
systematically analyze and categorize Chinese characters. The categories Xu
proposed are still valid today. Xu thus
was the first to recognize such characters as pictographs, simple and compound
indicative characters and semantic phonetic compounds, as well as of the
equivalent of the Rebus Principle.
There is a wealth of websites with excellent pictures and discussion of oracle bone and bronze inscriptions, as well as the evolution of Chinese writing. I include some of them here for your reference.
Websites on Oracle Bones Inscriptions
In English:
http://www.ancientscripts.com/chinese.html
http://www.logoi.com/notes/chinese_origins.html
In Chinese (but the pictures are worth looking at even if you can’t read Chinese):
http://www.chinavista.com/experience/oracle/oracle.html
http://www.anyang.gov.cn/yswh/ys/jagu/swjz/
http://coas.missouri.edu/anthromuseum/ethno/asiascapula.htm
http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Culture/language-oracle-bone.html
http://brian.hoffert.faculty.noctrl.edu/REL100/OracleBone
http://www.cc5000.com/zhishi/shufa/jiaguwen1.htm
http://home.seechina.com.cn/html/arts/1jgwjw.html
Chinese Websites on Bronze Inscriptions (for the pictures, if you can’t
read Chinese):
http://www.dyu.edu.tw/~yfc/calligrapher/07_stories/normal/022.htm
http://homepage2.nifty.com/tagi/koten011.htm
http://www.sivs.chc.edu.tw/www2root/ox_view/WORD_2.HTM
http://www.npm.gov.tw/exhbition/wen0630/c.htm
http://www.shanghaimuseum.net/library/asp/lbs_show.asp?ssflid=4&lbdhid=28
http://home.seechina.com.cn/html/arts/1jgwjw.html