Origin and Forms of Chinese Characters
8 min readThe famous linguist Xu Shen in the Eastern Han dynasty mentioned a myth in his classics Analytical Dictionary of Characters that Shennong was one of the earliest ancestors of Chinese people who taught primitive people to keep their records by tying knots on ropes and carving on woods. But these ways of recording had their limitation for the information contained in them was few, and the spreading of the information contained on them was very slow in the ancient time because it was hindered by the natural conditions. So the invention of Chinese characters as new marks for telling and recording has to be on its way to solve the problem.
There had been many myths about the origin of Chinese characters. The most famous one is that Chinese characters were invented by Cangjie. As early as the Warring States period the classics Book of Xun Kuang, the Master and Master Lu’s Spring and Autumn Annals recorded the myths about the invention of Chinese characters by Cangjie. The legend told us that Cangjie was the historiographer in the royal court of Yellow Emperor and he was extremely clever and intelligent with exceptional wisdom as well as the mysterious ability to communicate with deities and gods.
It was told that when he watched the footprints of birds and beasts on the earth he was inspired to invent Chinese characters. The most detailed historical records describing the invention of Chinese characters by Cangjie are Compendium ofBiography of Calligraphers by Tao Zongyi in the Ming dynasty. Tao wrote that Cangjie’s alias name was Huangjie and his family name was Hougang, he was the historiographer of Yellow Emperor. He had four eyes so that he possessed the exceptional abilities which the ordinary people did not have, enabling him to understand the wills of the God. His up-seeing eyes could perceive the gradual changes of the sun and the moon, and his down-seeing eyes could distinguish the different veins and grains of tortoise shells and bird feather. He developed the written language invented by Fuxi so the later generations called the characters he invented as ancient characters. Court Collection of Model Calligraphy Engraved inthe Third Reigning Year of Chunhua printed in the Song dyansty contained twenty-eight characters he invented. So people titled him inventor of ancient characters.
Archeologists found the earliest picture of Cangjie in the recently excavated tombs of the Han dynasty. He had four big and bright eyes and sat uprightly on the ground. The invention of Chinese characters has been so fantastic that our primitive ancestors broke the monoply on information by deities and gods and kept the key of the spreading of information in their own hands. Our ancestors described the greatchange of it that “Cangjie invented characters and the heaven was frightened with falling millet, and ghosts and apparitions cried for it at nights”.
There were many contemporaries of Cangjie who co-invented or co-created characters, but why was he the only one to become the legendary person and be known and told generations by generations? In fact he might be an intelligent and wise man collating Chinese characters created by many people before and in his times, and his hardworking and merits were recognized by the whole society. Maybe this is the important reason that his legend has been spread. The characters he invented havegradually become the symbols of culture. Chinese people have loved and worshipped Chinese characters so deeply that they have become the basis of national consciousness.
But the accounts of various myths are unreliable. As a matter of fact, Chinese characters have been enriched and developed during the long history of social practice. The famous Chinese scholars Guo Moruo and Yu Xingwu hold that the origin of Chinese characters could be traced back to the cultures of Banpo and Yangshao six thousand year ago. Archeologists found that on the potteries excavated in Banpo site had more than twenty different forms of carvings which were deemed as primitive forms of Chinese characters by Guo Moruo. While Yu Xingwu thought that they were the simple characters created in the original stage of Chinese characters. If these carving symbols were truly the origin of Chinese characters，then the similar carving analogous to Chinese characters have been discovered in various places over China.
Archeologists have excavated in Dawenkou culture sites in the lower reaches of the Yellow River，the Yangshao culture sites in the middle reaches of the Yellow River，the Liangzhu culture sites of the Yangtze River and the Daxikou culture sites in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River a great number of potteries and jade objects of the pre-historic periods.There were many carving symbols on these potteries and jade objects，which were closely related with the inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells in the later period.People called these carvings with the character traits the primitive characters.The structures of these carvings were quite similar to the inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells，but they appeared more than one thousand years earlier.These carving symbols were the earliest characters created with drawing，so they were termed”pictographic characters”.
Though they sti1l could not record human language completely，the main information contained in the spoken language was gathered in these carving symbols.
Since their appearance to the time they changed to the form of official script in the Han dynasty，Chinese characters had kept its principle of pictographs.But after changing to the form of official script，the pictographic principle of creating Chinese characters was abandoned.It gave up the ancient pictographic way of”creating characters according to the forms of the objects and draw the objects” and started the way of writing with horizontal stroke，vertical stroke，right-falling stroke，left-falling stroke and other strokes to form characters similar to “square characters”.
Compared with the written languages of other civilizations，Chinese characters have had their continuous evolution for four or five thousand years and have their own remarkable characteristics.Then people may ask that which type of written languages could be classified into？
The forms of Chinese characters closely relate with the nature of the symbols they use.Chinese characters have combined three different character symbols，namey the symbol of meaning，the symbol of sound and marks for their creation.Judging from the principles of creating characters，Chinese characters are in the category of ideograph，which mainly expresses the meaning of characters with pictograph while expressing their sound.They are the perfect combination of sound，form and meaning.
The methods of creating Chinese characters mainly have two formulations of six-categories and three-categories.
The term six categories was originated from Rites of Zhou Dynasty.In his Analytical Dictionary of Characters the linguist Xu Shen held that”six categories” were self-explanatory characters，pictographic characters，associative compoundscharacters，pictophonetic characters，mutual explanatory characters and phonetic loan characters.They were the basic principles for creating Chinese characters.He interpreted them in detail in Chapter of Preface in the same dictionary.The generaexplanations were followings.Self-explanatory characters were those we immediately know when we see them and know what they mean if we watch them carefully，such as characters （up）and （down）.Pictographic characters were those drawn as what the objects were，and the strokes of them changed with the external forms of the objects，such as characters （sun）and （moon）.Pictophonetic characters were created with one element indicating meaning and the other one expressing the sound，such as（river）.
Associative compounds characters were formed by combining two or more elements，each with a meaning of its own to create a new meaning，such as character（trust），which means a message or something that can be believed or trusted.The character was made up of （man）and（word），and the character（military）means the abandonment of the dagger-axe by （force or war）.Mutual explanatory characters were created with two words annotating each other，having the similar meaning but with different forms，such as characters （old age）and （long life，aged）.Phonetic loan characters referred to the way of creating new characters by seeking an existing substitute which has the same or similar pronunciation expressing the nature of matters or things，such as（official）.
Self-explanatory characters and pictographic characters took the most part among the inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells and the inscriptions on ancient bronze objects，for the object-drawing was the most direct way of creating characters.But with the development of Chinese characters，many characters had to be carefully distinguished.Characters （carp），（loach）and（grass carp）are different kinds of fish，but it is very hard to distinguish them from each other vividly withpictographic characters.Then the associative compounds are the most convenient way for creating them.What people needed was to use their mutual radicals to indicatethat they were in the fish category and then distinguish the different characters with the same or similar pronunciation.Though the theory of”six categories”was concluded long after the invention of Chinese characters，our ancestors did create new characters according to the theory.
“Three categories”divided Chinese characters into three different forms of characters.They are pictographic characters，associative compounds characters and pictophonetic characters.
Pictographic characters were characters created according to pictographic principle.This way of character-creating vividly indicated the meaning of the character.They were all individual characters.With long time of development and evolution the original characters had changed gradually.Some of their strokes were reduced and some were added.They changed from irregular characters to regular characters and gradually became the later forms of square characters，such as seal scripts（sun，moon，cloud and rain）.But the shortcoming of pictographic characters was that they could not express abstract conceptions so associative compounds characters appeared.Associative compounds characters were fit to express abstract meaning，and they were created by using different radicals or loaned pictographic characters and added some other associative radicals to express some abstract meaning，such as characters（winter，stand and attack）.
People could only guess the meaning of characters from their pictographic character forms and the associative compounds characters forms，but they could not get a hint of their sound，that was，the pronunciation of the characters.This problem was finally solved by pictophonetic characters.The pictophonetic characters were created by combining sound radicals and pictographic radicals.The character forms indicated the meaning as well as the pronunciation.For example，characters in（dad and fragrant plant），and referred to the meaning of father and plant repectively，and indicated their sound.With this creating method more and more characters were created.According to the statistics more than ninety percent of Chinese characters are pictophonetic characters.
Chinese characters express their meaning and sound with their radicals and this characteristic has decisively entrusted to the forms of Chinese characters profound cultural significance.So we may wonder，what mysteries concealed in the forms of Chinese characters？
