Why did ancient people write from the right to the left when they wrote?

Why did the ancient Chinese write from right to left.

For the ancients who used a brush to write, it was far less convenient to write from right to left than from left to right. From right to left, be sure to hang your wrist, otherwise it is easy to contaminate the clothes and paper, which greatly increases the difficulty and speed of writing.

However, it is clear that there are a lot of inconveniences. Why did the ancient Chinese write from right to left? Until now, no one has been able to explain this issue clearly, and the so-called "no one can say clearly" means that no one has discussed this issue, but this question is under the following three conditions.

1. There are no historical documents left written records, 2There are no archaeological finds related to this issue, 3There is no authoritative answer to this question from a professional authority.

A question that meets the above three conditions is basically "unclear", although there is no authoritative answer, but there is never a lack of non-authoritative "analysis" and "speculation", of which the following two statements are the most common, what is the reason why ancient Chinese wrote words from right to left.

"The Ancients" Among the many explanations, "the ancients respected the right" is the most common speculation. This statement points out that because the ancients respected the right and the right as the top, it is logical to write from right to left, but in fact, this statement is not valid, and it is not necessarily whether the ancients respected the left or the right. The ancients had different attitudes towards the left and the right in different periods and in different places.

Sometimes the right side is big, sometimes the left side is big, there is no formula, and the current literature records the earliest Xia, Shang and Zhou periods, and does not respect power. According to relevant literature, during the Xia, Shang and Zhou periods, the **** was the first to the left, while the Yan State, the fierce affairs, and the military affairs were the first to respect the right.

That is, in the main period of the formation of Chinese characters, respect for the left and right existed at the same time, and tended to respect the left, according to the writing of this period, the oracle bone script went from left to right and from right to left. It depends on the shape of the oracle and the cracks that occur after burning, the gold is different. At present, Jin Wen has formed a relatively fixed vertical style from right to left.

In other words. >Writing from right to left is the format of the golden text! At the same time, it also shows that in the period when Chinese wrote from right to left, people basically did not form the concept of right as the top, and writing from right to left has nothing to do with "respecting rights"!

Convenient to write" theory.

There are many opinions in this regard, but what we see is not rigorous enough, it cannot withstand scrutiny, and there will be flaws if we think about it a little. It is precisely because of this that no authoritative expert has come forward to affirm which explanation, and there is no need to list them one by one here, delaying everyone's time, everyone knows that there are many such statements.

Because the ancients believed that the right side was more solemn than the left side, and the position was higher than the left side. In order to highlight the importance of the right side, this is done from the right side.

Because they think it's very easy to write like that, and they think they can write like that to make them more sober.

At that time, it was first written on bamboo slips, in order to facilitate ** and use, so this was written from right to left, and it was also very beautiful.

It is a habit of life, and at that time, these words were written on tortoise shells or copper plates, and this had to be folded after writing, so it was also more convenient to carry, and it would not be wiped.

Because ancient people used a brush to write, in order to know how much paper they had left, they would write from the right to the left, making it easier to control the size of their font.

Categories: Culture Arts >> Literature >>**.

Problem description: I use a brush again, so it's not easy to get my hands dirty?

Analysis: The writing habit of the ancients is from right to left, and the essence is from west to east, which is the same as the essence of today, and this is the direction of the earth's rotation. This style of writing originated from gossip and later became a habit.

Anyone who knows a little about the Book of Changes knows that the directions in the Bagua are: left, east, right, west, up, south, down, north, just the opposite of the directions of modern maps. The word "heaven and south, earth and north" in the idiom is ** here, because the upper is the sky is the south, and the lower is the earth is the north.

Why is there a reverse direction? The reason for this is that the former is looking at the sky from the ground, and it is looking at the sky from the ground in China, so it is an upward perspective. The latter is "looking at heaven and earth", which is a kind of overlooking angle.

How did the ancients come to that definition? Let's suppose there was an ancient man standing on the ground in China, and he spread a piece of paper on the ground, facing south and facing north, left east and right west. Then write the direction on the paper on the ground in front of and behind you, and then take this piece of paper to see, which is just in line with the direction on the Bagua map.

If this ancient man is allowed to turn his body to look at the earth at 180 degrees, he will face north and back to south, left west and right east, which is also consistent with the map orientation, so there is no difference between the two in essence.

If we turn the horizontal axis of the coordinate system by 180°, it will conform to the writing habits of the ancients, and at the same time make it conform to the direction of the eight trigrams. If we build a model based on the definition of "left is yang, right is yin, upper is yang, and lower is yin", we will get a surprisingly interesting result: we find that the ancients are in line with both natural and mathematical principles.

Let's take a look at the diagram above, which combines the coordinates in mathematics with the directions of the eight trigrams. 1. In nature, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, so the east is yang and the west is yin; The climate in the south is hot, fire is yang, and the climate in the north is cold, and water is yin; Therefore, the southeast is the yang sun in the yang, and the northwest is the yin and the yin in the yin; The northeast is the yin of the yang for the less yin, and the southwest is the yang of the yin for the less yang.

2. In the definition of the ancients, the left is yang, the right is yin, the upper is yang, and the lower is yin, so the yang in the upper left is the sun, the yin in the lower right is the taiyin, the lower left is the yin in the yang, and the upper right is the yang in the yin.

3. If we look at the direction of the arrows of the horizontal axis and the vertical axis in the coordinates, we can see that the upper left quadrant is positive, the lower right is negative and negative, the lower left is positive and negative, and the upper right is negative positive. Suppose the positive is yang and the negative is yin, that is, the upper left is yang yang (sun), the lower right is yin yin (taiyin), the lower left is yang yin (less yin), and the upper right is yin and yang (less yang). This is in line with both the reality of nature and the nature of mathematics, and the three are consistent.

I draw the three attributes into the same diagram and call it the "Nature, Mathematics, and Bagua Orientation Triad" diagram.

I have said too much nonsense, in short, many habits of the ancients came from gossip, and it cannot be simply thought that it is caused by hygiene habits.