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106
THE ALPHABET
left by royal diviners; they are responses given to private individuals who came to seek the aid of divination in the affairs of daily life. "It is not to be supposed that once these bits of bone reached the hands of scholars they were deciphered easily. At first, even Chinese palæographers could make out no more than a word here and there, while the very nature of the inscriptions remained a mystery." However, "it is now possible to read most of the characters in almost any inscription and to understand quite adequately the meaning of most inscriptions. This adventure in scholarship has been as thrilling and in many ways as notable an achievement as the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics." "Most of this work has been by Chinese scholars." (H. G. Creel.)
Although these inscriptions are very short-most of them containing not more than ten to twelve characters, and the longest hardly exceeding sixty-their importance from the point of view of the history of writing is paramount; there appear to be some 3,000 different characters, of which however not more than some 600 have been identified. Amongst the various difficulties offered by the script of the "Honan bones," there is that of the uncertain discrimination between different characters and mere variants of a character.
STORY OF CHINESE CHARACTERS
In the long history of Chinese writing, there are two fields of development: (1) the external form of the Chinese symbols, and (2) the systematization of the Chinese characters.
External Form of Chinese Symbols
The main changes in the shapes of the single symbols were due to the changes in the materials used for writing; thus, when the narrow bamboo stylus was used and writing was done on silk and slips of bamboo or wood, lines and curves could be easily traced, and they were all equally thick; these peculiarities are shown in the ta chuan, "greater seal characters" (Fig. 53, 6a and 54, 1-2), and the hsiao chuan, "lesser seal characters" (Fig. 53, 6b). Bronze tools, shaped like the "burin" or knifes were employed for the engraved script.
The invention of pi, the writing-brush made of elastic hair, enormously influenced the formal evolution of the script; curves became straight or nearly so, and the likeness to the original pictures was in most cases destroyed (the transformation of the early cuneiform writing presents a good parallel case). This invention is traditionally attributed to Meng T'ien, the builder of the Great Wall, who died about 210 B.C., but must precede him. The fluid was generally a dark varnish. A further development of the external forms of the character came with the invention of paper in A.D. 105.
