Ancient texts tell the story of Cāngjíe, who descended from the heavens to give Chinese characters to mankind. It is said that when Cāngjíe completed his task the sky rained millet and ghosts in the netherworld wailed and wept.
The West, for the most part, finds Chinese characters utterly incomprehensible. The Chinese written language is one of the oldest and most-widely used—some also say it's the most rich and complex, with layers and layers of meaning.
There are so many aspects to this rich, ancient language, such as structure, form, style, and meaning, that it behooves us to spend some time with Chinese characters.
Prehistoric peoples in the East used a method called knot tying to communicate. More than 2000 years ago, divinators used "oracle bone" characters. They engraved queries onto tortoise shells and held them over a fire. Cracks in the shells provided the answers.
Qin Qihua, the emperor who unified China, ordered his prime minister, Li Si, to catalog and standardize the various writing forms in his empire. The first 3,300-character Chinese dictionary was introduced in 220 BC.
Three hundred years later, in 121 AD, the scholar Xú Shěn researched and composed the next systematic lexicon of Chinese characters, called Shūo wén jǐe zì. Xu Shen extended the original dictionary to 10,516 characters, grouped under 540 radicals.
The next major change occurred during the Qing Dynasty. In 1717 Emperor Kāng Xī systematized 40,000 characters with 214 radicals in his Kāng Xī zí diǎn.
In 1967 the Chinese Communist Party simplified traditional Chinese characters. Pin Yin would provide the bridge with Western languages. Under communist rule most of Mainland China now uses simplified characters, but Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan continue to use traditional characters.
The ancients believed that the legendary Yellow Emperor, considered the father of the Chinese people, ordered Cāngjíe to develop a way of writing that would replace the knot-tying method.
It's also said that Cāngjíe saw a divine being in the sky and drew the first Chinese characters by imitating its shape. Cāngjíe then observed all manner of natural objects and made written characters. Delighted, the Yellow Emperor commended him and had temples erected in his honor.
The Chinese system of traditional characters may very well be more than merely another language to master. Ancient Chinese culture maintained that there was a fundamental tie between humanity and the great cosmos. With the invention of Chinese characters it was believed a human being could return to his divine origin, putting him out of reach of beings in the nether realms. No wonder ghosts of the netherworld wailed and wept.
And for human beings, perhaps it's our opportunity to smile and applaud.
Feeds