Is Cangjie a legend? Who created Chinese characters?

It is a legend that Chinese characters were created by ancient people in their labor. In ancient times, people needed to record in their labor, and in the long run, the graphics recorded by people became Chinese characters.

Cangjie is not just a myth and legend, this does exist in history, and Chinese characters were indeed created by Cangjie.

When Sima Qian wrote the "Historical Records", the reason why Cangjie did not mention the creation of characters was probably because Sima Qian believed that Chinese characters could not be "developed" by one person, but the history of some ethnic minorities in later generations proved that writing could actually be "developed" by a person on the basis of fully borrowing from other languages, so the possibility of Cangjie "developing" Chinese characters by himself still exists. However, there is no archaeological or documentary evidence to prove that Chinese characters were "developed" on the basis of borrowing from other scripts, so even if there is such a thing as "Cangjie making characters", it can only be completed after Cangjie led a large group of people to work hard for several years, more than ten years, or even decades.

The legend of Cangjie characters appeared at the end of the Warring States period.

From the Yellow Emperor to the Warring States Period, there has been no record of Cangjie in the history books, until the late Warring States period, there was a sudden appearance of Cangjie to make words, the earliest record is that Xunzi pointed out that there are many good books in the late Warring States period, and Cangjie is the only one, one also. According to historical records, after the rise of the Xuanyuan Yellow Emperor, the historians of the Yellow Emperor Cangjie and Frustrated were inspired by the footprints of birds and beasts, concentrated the wisdom of the working people, and worked hard for decades to collect, sort out and promote the hieroglyphic symbols that circulated with the ancestors.

Although the knots differ in size and shape, they are difficult to identify over time. Hou Cangjie looked up at the curved movement of Kuixing, looked down at the texture of the turtle's back, the claw marks of birds and beasts, the shape of mountains and rivers, and the fingerprints of his palms, and was inspired to create hieroglyphs based on the shape of things.

Cangjie's main achievements

1. To improve the text, the so-called Cangjie (Cangjie) writing is not to say that Cangjie completely invented and created the text, but to say that Cangjie will extensively collect the existing folk pictures and texts, and carefully sort them out, so as to create a set of systematic and standardized hieroglyphs.

2. The number of rise and fall of ancient emperors is recorded in detail on the Book of Luo, Hetu and Luoshu, and the Taoism of governing the people and the country, which can only be obtained by the emperor who is ordained by God. After Cangjie ascended the throne as emperor, he patrolled his territory to the south, climbed Yangxu Mountain, and followed the Luo River to the east to Luo Wei at the confluence of Luoshui and the Yellow River. It was found that the spirit turtle was carrying a mysterious pattern and was dedicated to Cangjie.

Bagua is the evolution of Luoshu, and later "Zhou Yi"**.

The above content reference: Encyclopedia - Cangjie.

The legend of "Cangjie making characters" has been widely spread in the Warring States Period: "Xunzi Jiesha" said: "There are many good books, and Cangjie is the only one".

Cangjie [jié] word-making, is one of the ancient Chinese mythology of the book of rough sayings, Cangjie word creation place called the town of the hand town "phoenix title book". From "Huainanzi Benjing Training": "The former Cangjie wrote books, and the sky rained, and the ghosts cried at night.

Cangjie, known as Cangjie, surnamed Hou Gang, and known as Shi Huang, once collected, sorted, regulated, and used the words that circulated among the ancestors, and played an important role in the process of creating Chinese characters.

Cangjie, formerly surnamed Hou Gang, is known as Cangjie Xianshi, and Shi Huang's family, also known as Cangwang and Cangsheng. Shuowen Jiezi, Shiben, Huainanzi all record that Cangjie is the Yellow Emperor period of the left historian of the Yellow Emperor to see the footprints of birds and beasts, divided into different categories, to collect, sort out and use, in the process of the creation of Chinese characters played an important role, was respected as the "word making sage" according to the "Hetu Jade Edition" and "Zen Tongji" records, Cangjie once established himself as the emperor, called Cangdi, is the leader of a tribe in ancient times. During the reign of Cangjie, he once worshipped Luo Shu in Luozhishui.

The legendary Cangjie script was inspired by the use of knots to keep notes, and then created hieroglyphs based on the shape of things. Cangjie was inspired by the texture of the turtle's back, the claw marks of birds and beasts, the shape of the mountains and rivers, and the fingerprints of the palms, and created words based on the shapes.

Legend has it that Cangjie was an official under the Yellow Emperor. The Yellow Emperor assigned him to manage the number of animals in the pen and the amount of food in the tun. But slowly, the storage of livestock and food is gradually increasing and changing, and it is impossible to remember it with my head alone.

Cangjie is in trouble. All day and all night, he tried to figure out a way, first tying knots in the rope and using ropes of various colors to represent different kinds of livestock. But after a long time, it doesn't work.

This increased number is convenient to tie a knot in the rope, and when the number is reduced, it is troublesome to untie the knot in the rope. Cangjie thought of making circles on ropes and hanging all kinds of shells in the circles to replace what he was in charge of. If you add more, you will add a shell, and if you decrease, you will remove a shell.

This method has been used for several years. Cangjie made words, the Yellow Emperor valued him very much, everyone praised him, and his reputation became bigger and bigger.

Legend has it that he observed the footprints of birds and beasts and was inspired to create writing, and he went around observing the depictions of plants, trees, utensils, and shapes. Make different symbols.

In ancient times, our ancestors, like other animals, had no language or writing, and could only communicate with each other with their hands and body movements. The earliest human language is:"Babble, ah, wow, ha"and other monophonic interjections, and then gradually develop into two-tone words. After millions of years of evolution and development, it was not until the late Neolithic period (about 100,000 years ago) that humans had a rudimentary language.

<> by the time of Flinterman, there was a large number of languages, but there was no written language, so different things could only be represented by placing stones, depending on the size of the stones, the number of stones, how the stones were stacked, and the placement of the stones. Later, this method was cumbersome, inconvenient to manage, and easy to destroy. The weavers of the Frynman tribe invented the technique of twisting rope and then invented it"Knotted ropes"。

Before words, people used their brains to memorize things. The capacity of the brain is limited, and humans will always die, and the brain will die with it. While it is possible to pass information from one brain to another through storytelling, there is always an error after a few passes.

By the end of primitive society, society had become complicated, who owed whom, what could be eaten, what could be poisoned, what could be cured, and so on. The brain alone is no longer enough to meet people's needs, and there is an urgent need for something to memorize for our brains, so words appeared. After the advent of writing, people gradually took on new uses, writing poems, compiling history, and even memorizing recipes, and culture gradually took shape.

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Cangjie, also known as Cangjie, was originally surnamed Hou Gang, named Jie, and was named Shi Huang, who was said to be the historian of the Yellow Emperor, the creator of Chinese characters, and was respected by later generations as the ancestor of Chinese characters. Fiber this.

However, it is generally believed that the creation of Chinese characters by Cangjie alone is just a legend.

From the ancient legend of Cangjie characters to the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions before 1400 BC, generations of Chinese scholars have been committed to unraveling the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters.

The earliest carved symbols are more than 8,000 years ago, about the origin of Chinese characters, there are various sayings in ancient Chinese documents, such as "knotted rope", "gossip", "pictures", "book deeds", etc., and the legend of the Yellow Emperor's historian Cangjie is also widely recorded in ancient books.

Modern scholars believe that it is impossible for a systematic writing tool to be created by a single person, and that Cangjie, if there is indeed a person, should be the compiler or promulgator of the text.

There is a legend of Cangjie making characters in ancient books in China, saying that Cangzhuan Shoujie is the historian of the Yellow Emperor, he has four sensitive and shiny eyes, he is inspired by the footprints of birds and beasts, and later created words. Cangjie's word-making incident alarmed the heavens and the earth, and the grains fell from the sky like raindrops.

Are Chinese characters really made by Cangjie?

We know that language is produced in labor, and the symbols that record language, the words, are also produced in labor. Before the production of writing, people used to remember or transmit information, one is to knot the rope to remember, and then to draw pictures and make **, usually this kind of pictures and ** called text paintings. Primitive Chinese characters began to appear in the late period of primitive society, and were collectively created by working people in social production and social life, not by any one person alone.

But "when the written word sprouts among the people, it must have been taken over by the privileged." After entering the class society, in the process of the development of Chinese characters from the original script to a complete writing system, the main role was probably played by people such as witches and historians who served the rulers. If Cangjie is indeed a person, it can only be said that as a historian, he played an important role in the formation of Chinese characters.

When were Chinese characters formed? The materials that have been found that may be related to the original Chinese characters are mainly the symbols carved and depicted on the artifacts left over from the primitive era. These symbols can be broadly divided into two categories.

The first type of form is relatively simple, most of them are geometric symbols, which can be seen on the pottery of primitive cultures such as Yangshao. The second category is symbols in the shape of concrete things, which can be found on the pottery of primitive cultures such as Dawenkou. According to expert research, the geometric symbols commonly used in the primitive society era are not yet words, and the Dawenkou pictographs may already have the nature of words.

Because in the late period of the Dawenkou culture, production was already quite developed, and the social differentiation between the rich and the poor was already very significant, and the requirement to record the language was likely to have appeared. It can be inferred that the formation of Chinese characters began no later than the middle of the third millennium BC.

By the end of the third millennium BC, with the establishment of the Xia Dynasty, China officially entered a class society. In order to rule effectively, the ruling class inevitably urgently needed a more perfect script, and the rate of improvement of the original script was greatly accelerated. The Xia Dynasty has a complete lineage that has been handed down, which is a reflection of the great improvement of the original script.

It is probably on this basis that Chinese characters formed a complete writing system during the Xia and Shang periods (around the 17th century BC).