Chinese Calligraphy History: Chinese Calligraphy History (8) The characters on bamboo and wooden slips

Bamboo and wooden slips for writing

As mentioned in previous posts, in Warring States Time (403 - 221 B.C), there was no paper, Chinese started to write characters on bamboo slips, wooden slips or wooden tablets. Because they were much cheaper than the animal skin, or silk, many people could afford to use them. So the writing finally became popular, and played important role in economy, education and people's daily life since then.

- Bamboo slips with characters

At that time, people started to use brush and ink to write on the slips or tablets, which were very narrow, only 0.8 - 1 cm wide (0.3 - 0.4 inch) wide, 8 inches to 1.2 feet long. So people wrote up down with only one vertical line, after one finished one slip, then wrote on the next slip.

The narrow slips dramatically limited people to write horizontally, we see many characters of animal are written vertically in shell bone script, or big seal script.

From left to right in the first line: 犬-Dog), 虎-Tiger, 馬 - Horse,
the second line: 豕- Pig, 象- Elephant

Because it is easier to write them vertically than horizontally.

The clerical scripts for above four characters are

Difficult to see the similarities to the shell bone scripts in first two, but some similarities in the rest three.

The right-handed people liked to hold the brush with right hand, the left hand held the slip, after finished one slip, he put it down, then took another blank slip on the left, then put down on the left side of the first slip after finishing writing. Because more right-handed people than left-handed people, so all found slips or tablets were written from right to left. It took hundreds of years before the paper was invent by Lun Cai (105 AD), the up down and right left writing rule continued even after paper was used widely.

After writing finished, people made holes on each slip or tablet, then linked them with ropes to form books.

So the books in Shell-Bone script and Small seal script are like the linked slips.

- Left: Bamboo slips with characters; Right: 冊 - Book in Shell-bone script

Because the characters were written on the slips with ink, if there was an error in writing, the best way to erase them is to scrape it with knife. So the character “cancel” is

- A book on the left with a knife on the right means "cancel".

In Qin Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses, the experts found that a very small Warriors have no weapon but a small knife, brush and bamboo slips, they think that those people were secretaries in the army. The knife was used to erase the errors.

- The Terro Cotta Warriors.

Another character related to 册 - book is 典 - dictionary，

- It looks like a big book held by two hands (Shell-bone script)

In Small seal script, the above three characters, 冊-book, 刪 - cancel and 典 - dictionary are as following

- from left to right: 册 - book, 删 - cancel, 典 - dictionary

They are similar as what they are in Shell-bone script. But the bottom of 典 - dictionary on the right is like a table or shelf insead of two hands, which is closer to the situation in real life.

Because one slip is much thicker than paper, and it could only take a few characters, so people needed so many slips to write a book that a book might need a big vehicle to transfer. There is a Chinese proverb: 學富五車，in which 學－knowledge, 富－rich, 五－five, 車－vehicle, which means that a person has so much knowledge, who needs five vehicles to take or move his books. Five vehicle books may only have 10 or less book in paper.