A Brief History of Chinese Characters

8/8/2019 A Brief History of Chinese Characters

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/a-brief-history-of-chinese-characters 1/18

A Brief History of

Chinese Characters

by Dr. Richard Stibbard

www.chinaglos.co.uk



Dr. Richard Stibbardwww.chinaglos.co.uk

- 1 -

A Brief History of ChineseCharacters

by Richard Stibbard

www.chinaglos.co.uk

As you know, Chinese is written using thousands of different characters, so it makes sense to

understand as much as we can about how they arose and how they work and are formed,before we undertake the daunting task of learning them.

Early views from the West

Chinese characters have captivated and confused Westerners in equal measure ever since theearliest prolonged contact between the cultures, which began with the Portuguese

missionaries who went to and lived in China in the 16th

Century.

Following are some representative quotations from that period and later:

Gaspar da Cruz (1569), a Portuguese missionary:

“The [Chinese] have … a great multitude of characters, signifying each thing by a characterin such sort that one only character signifies ‘Heaven’, another ‘earth’, another ‘man’, and so

forth with everything else”.

A Chinese convert to Christianity (1776):

“[characters] … not having any sound, can be read in all languages, and form a sort of

intellectual painting, a metaphysical and ideal algebra, which conveys thoughts by analogy,by relation, by convention, and so on.”

Fr. J.J.M. Amiot, a French missionary (1776):

“…images and symbols which speak to the mind through the eyes – images for palpablethings, symbols for mental ones. Images and symbols which are not tied to any one language

but can be read in all languages…”

A POINT FOR YOU TO THINK ABOUT AT THE START: The impression of each of these writers is that Chinese characters represent meaning or thoughts directly, without

reference to a particular language.

Were they correct in thinking this?




- 2 -

How old are Chinese characters?

There are writing systems which are older than Chinese characters, but they have died out of use. Chinese characters are the oldest writing system in the world still in use today.

So, they are very old, but do you know just how old they really are?

A BBC report from May 2007 dates Chinese characters back to 8000 years ago, to Neolithic

times. Is this accurate?

The archaeological finds they were reporting on were cave paintings from Dàmàidì (大麦地),

Níngxià (宁夏) Province, which looked like this:

What do you think of these? Are these the earliest Chinese characters?

Well, my students have universally agreed at a glance that these are just simple pictures,

which could have been found anywhere in the world, and that there is nothing to link them toChinese characters or to any other language. Serious archaeologists agree with them; they areessentially the same as similar paintings in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Unfortunately,

at one time the Chinese press had a habit of producing quite frequent reports dating theorigins of Chinese characters ever further back in time, and the BBC appears to have taken

this report at face value…




- 3 -

Neolithic cultures in China

There were a large number of Neolithic cultures in China in the period 10,000 – 4,000 BC.They produced fine decorative items such as these:

Typically, these Neolithic potsand other artefacts were

decorated with geometric designs

such as these; none of them had

any marks resembling Chinese

characters.

The Bànpō Symbols

An intriguing find from Neolithic times is the Bànpō (半坡) Symbols, dating from 5000 to

4000 BC. Could these be the earliest Chinese characters?

What do these remind you of? What do you think they could be?

Most of my students respond that they look like early letters; they remind many of runes, or

ancient Celtic writing.

The problem is that these symbols never occurred together in groups, as they would have to

do if they were letters, representing sounds, forming words. They occurred singly, scratched

on pots. They remain a mystery; no-one has interpreted them or knows their function. They

might be clan emblems or signatures, numerals, or just potters’ marks…

One thing is clear – they are certainly not precursors of early Chinese characters, and there is

no firm evidence that they are even anything to do with language.




- 4 -

The (mythological) Yellow Emperor, Huángdì

Let us look now at the legend of how

Chinese characters originated. The story

begins with the Yellow Emperor, Huángdì(皇帝), believed to be the ancestor of all

Hàn Chinese, who is supposed to have ruled

China from 2497 BC to 2398 BC.

Huángdì is a very important figure in

Chinese mythology; the invention of traditional Chinese herbal medicine is

attributed to him, and he is said to have

lived to the age of 100 (99 years of whichhe apparently spent as Emperor), and

attained immortality after his physicaldeath.

Huángdì’s wife is said to have taught the

Chinese how to weave the silk from

silkworms.

The legend of how Chinese characters were invented

Legend has it that Huángdì became dissatisfied with the rope–tying method of recording

facts…

This was a system of encoding messages by the number and position of knots in bundles orrope. This system was widely used

in ancient times but becameimpractical as the bundles got toobig.

Unable to read messages encoded

only the day before, Huángdì

commissioned his official historian,

Cāngjié, with the task of inventing a

better system of writing…






- 6 -

Cāngjié was mightily impressed by the huntsman’s detective work and asked him how he

could identify the type of hoof so quickly. The huntsman told him he could identify thedistinctive characteristics of every type of hoof – each has its own special characteristics.

Cāngjié thought: “If I can apply this principle to EVERYTHING in the world then that’s mywriting system cracked and my head won’t get chopped off.”

So he looked at the world in a new light,

scrutinising all the objects around him,

carefully distinguishing the shape of each,

drawing characters to represent the sun, the

moon, the stars, the river, the fields, the

mountains, and eventually every manner of

bird and beast.

This is what he drew:

The earliest Chinese pictographs

And legend has it that when Chinesecharacters were invented “the Gods wept and

the sky rained millet.”

Shāng (商) Dynasty oracle bones

That, of course, is all legend. In fact, we know very well when Chinese characters date from.They are first found carved into ox bones and tortoise shells from the Shāng Dynasty, 1600 –

1100 BC, located in what is now Hénán (河南 ) Province. These Oracle Bone carvings

( jiǎgǔwén) (甲骨文) are the earliest recognisable fore–runners of Chinese characters and

have been read and interpreted by scholars. Many of them are clearly identifiable today:




- 7 -

The two bones on the left are ox bones; on the right is a tortoise shell. The circled character is

known to be the ancient version of the modern character for a cowry shell, which was used as

money. You may recognise several other characters if you look carefully.

These bones or tortoise shells were heated until they cracked, the pattern of cracks were

interpreted, and then the divination was then carved into the bones. The best examples havenot only the questions asked, but the prognostication, and sometimes even the subsequent

outcome.

The oracle bones were found in 1899-1900 being sold in a Chinese medicine shop as

“Dragon Bones” – they were being ground into powder and put into medicines. Once their

true origin was recognised they have produced the most valuable evidence of the first

Chinese writing.

The very earliest Shāng writings were simple pictures…

…which

gradually

became more

symbolic…

... this one is a symbol of hunting (a spear and two animals).

Gradual stylisation of pictographs

Over many centuries, Chinese characters then underwent a gradual process of stylisation:




- 8 -

Notice the change from round shapes to squared-off ones, perhaps easier for carving.

This early stylisation was probably fairly haphazard, different characters changing at different

rates, and with many different styles being used, overlapping in time and purpose. It was

certainly idiosyncratic and far from a unified writing system and could probably only be read

by those for whom it was intended, within a small area, and at the time it was written.

The gradual development of characters over the centuriesNotice how the transition from picture to character appears to take place at different points

for different characters:

The transcription in brackets shows the reconstruction by linguists of how ancient Chinese is

thought to have been pronounced.




- 9 -

The First Emperor, Qín Sh ǐhuáng

The First Emperor, Qín Shǐhuáng (秦始皇)

is a real, historical person. King of the State

of Qín (秦), he ruled China from 259 BC

until his death on 10th Sept, 210 BC. Fromhim we get the name China.

His list of achievements include:

having the first sections of the Great Wall of

China built;the creation of a national road network of

tens of thousands of miles;

vast canal projects;the development of a standardised currency;

the division of the country into provinces,

etc., and the introduction of organised

administration across the country.

He removed power from the feudal warlords

– all their weapons had to be returned to the

government or melted down and made into

agricultural tools. By ten years before his

death he had succeeded in unifying China

(221 BC).

Despite his unparalleled achievements, QínShǐhuáng was not an entirely enlightened

ruler in other ways. He taxed his peoplemercilessly and promoted legalism, a system of harsh punishments for any wrongdoing, as

well as rewards for the denouncement of family and neighbours.

He particularly hated religion and outlawed Confucianism. He banned and then burned all

books except those officially decreed acceptable. Books on medicine, pharmacy, andagriculture were spared. All religious and literary books were destroyed.

It wasn’t a good time to be a scholar either, as he didn’t appreciate scholars’ contribution to

society. As a way of discouraging them, he selected 460 of the best and brightest of the timeas an example to others and had them buried up to their necks in the ground and then

executed.

Qín Shǐhuáng had one weakness; he was terrified of dying and took longevity potions whichcontained mercury. He died at 49 of mercury poisoning.

He was, they say, finally brought down by one of the Confucian doctrines he hated – a ruler

may rule and be strong, and the people should obey. But ultimately a ruler can rule only with

the support of his people. To keep his mandate the ruler should be just. This idea of thevirtuous ruler, in the family and in the country, is central to Confucianism, and Qín

Shǐhuáng’s cruelty cost him his right to rule.




- 10 -

The terracotta warriors at Xī’ān (西安)

Qín Shǐhuáng is guarded in death by the Terracotta Warriors at Xī’ān:

As well as the model soldiers and officials, all his childless wives were killed and buried with

him. Chinese legend has it that 700,000 men worked on the tomb and that all were sealed

inside it when he died to preserve its secrets.

This, and the Great Wall, are painted as the supreme examples of Qín’s ruthless ambition –

countless thousands of lives were spent and lost in building these two great monuments to hisarrogance.

Reinvention and standardisation of the characters

Because of Qín’s destruction of the books, Chinese writing was almost wiped out too, and it

had to be largely reinvented after his death, from what was available, from memory, and by

analogy and invention. In the process, the haphazardness which had previously ruled was

brought to an end and standardisation begun as characters were made official across the now

much larger China, providing a common writing system for the many mutually unintelligible

dialects. Thus, inadvertently, Qín Shǐhuáng’s actions laid the basis for 2000 years of Chinese

unity.




- 11 -

Materials

Chinese characters have been carved, painted, written and printed on many materials,including:

Bronze vessels from 1100 – 250 BC

Note the neatly

carved

characters on

these ancient

pieces.

Bamboo Scrolls from the State of Qín (247–221 BC)

Discovered in 1975 in a Qín grave from217 BC, these date from the time of Qín

Shǐhuáng and his contemporaries.

They are an extensive collection of legal

records, daily records of government,history and myths.

Bamboo was cheap but inconvenient – the

daily official documents read by Emperor

Qín were said to have weighed over a

hundred pounds!

Paintbrushes were now popular instead of carving, bringing about changes in the

shapes of the characters – the rounded‘seal script’ (pictured on page 8) gave way

to the more angular look we see today.




- 12 -

Silk

Silk, first produced in China (3000 BC), was much more convenient than bamboo but it wasvery expensive. Woodblock printing on silk started in the 4th Century AD.

When printing starts, the initialwork involved in making the

blocks (of wood, or later metal)

is so great that one does not

want to change them on a whim.

Printing is thus a very powerful

force for standardisation, of

characters in the case of China

or of spelling in the West.

Although the spoken language

continues to change, once

printing starts, the writtenlanguage is relatively fixed.

The fact that printing started so

early in China means that thewriting system is frozen at a

much earlier time than it is inEurope, where printing (and

thus standardisation) did not

begin until 1495 in Germany,

somewhat later in England.

Paper – do you know when was paper invented?

True paper (made from wood-pulp) is said to have been invented by a eunuch, Cài Lún, (蔡

伦) around 100 AD. The world’s oldest handwriting on paper is from 110 AD and was found

in NE China.

Woodblock printing on paper was invented in China by 593 AD, and the world’s firstnewspaper was available in Beijing in 700 AD.

Printing developed greatly during the Táng (唐) Dynasty (618 – 907 AD), which further

standardised the characters.




- 13 -

This is a a page from the world’s earliest printed book, from 868 AD, a Buddhist text from

Dūnhuáng (敦煌), Gānsù (甘肃) Province, China. Look at the characters – do you see how

they are just like the modern traditional characters?

Movable metal type printing

Movable type was invented

in Korea around 1230 AD

and was soon used in China,

much earlier than in Europe.

This is a page from the

world’s earliest known book printed with movable metal

type, a Buddhist text from

1377.

Again, look closely at the

characters – they are just

like modern traditionalcharacters.




- 14 -

Regular Script ( kǎishū) (楷书)

Regular script began to be standardised

from 420 AD on.

This is the ancestor of the moderntraditional characters used in Taiwan

and Hong Kong and is characterised

by neat, well–formed characters, all

equal sized and fitting in a square, with

no strokes missing.

Look at the repeated elements

highlighted by the circles.

Most Chinese characters are

COMPOUND characters, made up of repeated elements – they are thus

certainly no longer pictures.

How Chinese characters were created

There are six types of Chinese character, but for our purposes, three of those are by far themost important. These are:

Type 1 – Stylised Pictographs and Symbols

Type 2 – Meaning-Meaning Compounds

Type 3 – Sound-Meaning Compounds

Type 1 – Stylised Pictographs and Symbols

You have already seen some common pictographs such as:

木川女口 mù – tree, wood chuān - river nǚ – woman k ŏu – mouth

These are the first characters supposed to have been invented by Cāngjié.




- 15 -

More symbolic characters were possible for some abstract ideas such as:

一二三上下 yī – one èr – two sān – three shàng – up, go up xià – down, go down

But after several hundred of these pictures and symbols, it became impossible to continue.

How could you make up characters for all the many abstract ideas needed for a full writing

system? So, the second type of character was born.

Type 2 – Meaning-Meaning Compounds

These combine two existing characters to represent a word for which there was previously nocharacter, e.g.:

木 is used to make two new characters:林 lín – wood (group of trees) and森 sēn ,

half of the word for forest, sēnl ín.

日 rì (sun or day) and月 yuè (moon or month) are combined to make明.

What do you think this means? Some of my students have, entirely logically, suggested it

could mean “day and night”. But this type of character is not very logical; actually it is thesyllable míng and means ‘bright’ in the word guāngmíng, (the brightness of the sun and the

moon combined). It is also the first half of the word for ‘tomorrow’: míngtiān. A particularly strange example of a meaning-meaning compound is the character美, měi,

‘beautiful’, which is also the first half of the word Měiguó, America. It is made up of 羊

yáng ‘sheep’ and大 dà, ‘big’.

Here are a few more examples of this type of compound:

The character安 ān (‘safe’ as in ānquǎn) is composed of 女, ‘woman’ under a roof. A

possible explanation is that a woman only feels safe with a roof over her head.

Fine so far, but what about家, a pig with the same roof over its head? What does that

mean? A pig-sty perhaps? No, it is the character for jiā, ‘family’ or ‘home’!

Was this a good way of expanding the range of characters? What do you think?




- 16 -

There are two quite serious problems with these meaning-meaning compounds: first, their

meaning tends to be apparent only to the person who thought them up. The inventor of the

měi character may have thought big sheep were the perfect example of beauty, but possiblyfew would agree! Certainly we cannot predict the meaning of a compound from its individual

parts.

The second problem with these compound characters is that there is no logic in their

pronunciation, nothing to link for instance yáng and dà with měi, or rì and yuè with míng.

They are the most interesting type of character, and often quite fun because they often shed

light on the thought processes of the ancient scribes who invented them, but their lack of

logic in either meaning or pronunciation makes them very hard to learn.

Sound-meaning compounds

The third, and most important method of forming new characters was to create sound-

meaning compounds, in which one part (the ‘phonetic’) stands for the sound only and theother part (the ‘radical’) gives a rough idea of the meaning.

Example 1 – the ma family

The basic character of the family is马 mă meaning ‘horse’

This ma (without the tone) is repeated in the following characters, indicating just the sound,

while the radical changes the meaning:

The ‘mouth’ radical,口, on theleft plus the sound ma 吗 ma? is the question particle as in N ǐ hǎo ma?

Two mouth radicals on top plus the

sound ma 骂 mà

is half of the word zémà, meaning ‘to scold’ –

i.e. something to do with speaking loudly (twomouths) which sounds like ma.

The ‘woman’ radical,女, plus the

sound ma 妈 mā in māma means ‘mother’ – something to do

with a woman which sounds like ma.

The ‘insect’ radical,虫, plus the

sound ma

蚂 mă in the word mǎyǐ means ‘ant’ – something to

do with an insect which sounds like ma.

With this new method, it was possible to expand the inventory of characters almost ad

infinitum. Character dictionaries grew to enormous proportions, of up to 50,000 characters.

Most of these are obscure and of little use – around 3000 characters, compounded repeatedly

together to make new words, account for most of those in common use.

Today, more than 80% of all characters are of this sort, so when we are learning characters,the bulk of them are “families” with a phonetic component indicating the sound (often

roughly) and changing radicals giving a clue (again, rather roughly) to different meanings.




- 17 -

Example 2 – the bao/pao family

The basic character of the family is包 bāo a symbol meaning ‘to wrap, a wrapper,wrapping’, etc.

This bao sound is repeated in the following characters:

The ‘eat’ radical,饣, plus the

sound bao 饱 bǎ o W ŏ bǎo le! means ‘I’m full!’ – i.e. something

to do with eating which sounds like bao.

The ‘fish’ radical鱼 plus the

sound bao 鲍 bào

in the word bàoyú (bào fish) means ‘abalone’,

a popular (and expensive) fish – i.e. a fish

which sounds like bao.

The ‘hand’ radical,扌, plus the

sound bao 抱 bào in yōngbào means ‘embrace’ – something to

do with hands which sounds like bao.

The ‘fire’ radical,火, plus roughly

the sound bao 炮 pào means ‘cannon, big gun’ – something to do

with fire which sounds a bit like bao. Often the

phonetic component is a bit inaccurate.

The ‘foot’ radical,足, plus roughly

the sound bao跑 păo

Pǎo pǎo pǎo! means ‘Run! Run! Run!’. Youget the picture – it’s something to do with feet

and it sounds a bit like bao.

As this example shows, the phonetic component was often chosen (from a list of possible

contenders which all sounded alike) for its contribution to the meaning – it is particularly neatthat the ‘wrap’ meaning occurs in ‘full’ (food wrapped up in the stomach), ‘abalone’ (the

clam’s shell wrapping the flesh), and ‘embrace’ (arms hugging the other person). However,

the primary function of this component is to indicate the sound and often its connection to

meaning is tenuous or non-existent, as in pǎo ‘to run’ and pào ‘cannon’. This has not deterrednotable scholars from going to great lengths to identify such meaning connections, often

rather fanciful ones.

So, let us now answer the question from the beginning as to whether early European visitors

were correct to view Chinese characters as a way of representing meaning directly without

recourse to language.

Were they right or wrong?

The earliest pictographic and symbolic characters might be viewed as an attempt to do that,

but even these represented particular Chinese words and syllables, not just ideas. But thehuge majority of characters are these sound-meaning compounds, and these represent the

sounds of particular Chinese words. They are specific to the Chinese language and are not in

any sense the “images and symbols which speak to the mind through the eyes” that the early

observers believed them to be.

A Brief History of Chinese Characters

Documents