Introduction to Classical Chinese February 4, 2013

The Shang Dynasty 商朝 shāng cháo ca BC – ca BC

Oracle Bone Script 甲骨文 jiǎgǔwén Short texts carved into ox bones and tortoise shells These texts were used for divination: a question was written into the bone with a bronze pin, the bone was heated, and the cracks were examined by shamans for an answer Questions were usually matters of state asked on behalf of the emperor or other high ranking officials: agriculture, hunting, warfare, weather, days for ceremonies Dating these texts is difficult, estimates vary from 1300 – 1100 BC, to 1500 – 1000 BC

Oracle Bone Script 甲骨文 jiǎgǔwén Around 400,000 fragments with inscriptions have been found around Anyang 安阳 ānyáng Where possible, the fragments have been reconstructed to reveal the texts they contained (currently several thousand reconstructions) The reconstructed texts contain over 30,000 distinct characters, which are thought to be variants on about 4,000 characters. Using context and comparative linguistic analysis, we believe we understand the definition of We believe that for every written character in OBS, there are roughly two spoken words in existence

Oracle Bone Script 甲骨文 jiǎgǔwén What we understand of the language has led us to believe that it had a high degree of linguistic sophistication, suggesting that the artifacts we’ve found are not the first instances of the writing

Bronze Script 金文 The beginning of China’s “bronze age” is a highly contested date We begin finding examples of bronze with writing in the late Shang; it is standard by the Zhou dynasty As with OBS, variants among the characters were wide and dependent upon the decorative function of what was inscribed as well as the individual inscriber

Seal Script 篆書 zhuànshū Adopted in the Western Zhou dynasty In the Qin dynasty (225 – 206 BC), it became the official script of all of China

Cursive Script 草書 cǎoshū Originates in the Han Dynasty 漢朝 (207 BC – 220 AD) Abbreviated form of traditional Chinese characters Many simplified characters trace their roots to early Chinese calligraphy, because the flowing of the strokes together minimized the appearance of the number of strokes This is where the contemporary term for Chinese characters: 漢字 / 汉字 comes from (characters of the Han)

57 AD First known instance of an artifact from China appearing in Japan King Na gold seal given by Han emperor Guangwu to a Yamato emissary Chinese coins from the first century have been found at Yayoi period archeological digs

Import of 漢字 into Japan While 漢字 appeared on items taken to Japan from China early, cultural interchange was insufficient to provide reading knowledge of these characters until the 5 th century According to Japanese imperial histories, the emperor dispatched a Korean scholar called Wani 王仁 was dispatched to Japan, and is largely responsible for literacy of Chinese characters and knowledge of Confucianism

Import of 漢字 into Japan At the time, Japanese did not exist as a written language, so 漢字 embodied the entirety of the written language, and began to stand for spoken Japanese The diacritical marks that are now known as hiragana were introduced gradually to accommodate the differences between the spoken languages