Bamboo Origin of vertical Chinese writing

In China, in parks, mountains, and villages, you can find Chinese characters or other symbols carved on living bamboos. People just act naturally, on the smooth surface, picking up a stone with sharp points. This simple and natural form of writing could have been practiced thousands of years ago and has to do with the origin of Chinese writing.

Vertical carvings on living bamboos predate bamboo strips

Writing horizontally is natural for the eyes to read. Although not in a natural direction, Chinese writing had been fixed in vertical columns until the last century. There should be a cause. tsien [1] he has attributed the verticality of Chinese writing to the strip and the bamboo brush. However, the bamboo strips can also be placed horizontally for writing. It seems that horizontal writing on bamboo strips from ancient times has never been discovered. As for the origin of the verticality of the Chinese writing on bamboo strips, there could be three scenarios. In the first case, the scribes sew the vertical direction without intending the horizontal. In the second case, both vertical and horizontal writing were practiced, but horizontality was later abandoned. In the third case, the vertical direction was already established before the bamboo strips were used. The first case is unlikely, since scribes can tell which direction is more advantageous after trying each one. The second case means that the vertical layout is advantageous over the horizontal layout in the competition. We do not support this case as we believe that horizontal writing is suitable for reading, so it should not fail the competition. Let’s talk about the third case.

To find scriptures rather than bamboo strips, we focus on two things: writing material and writing instrument. Again, we found bamboo. But this time it’s live bamboo. Certainly as a native plant of China, bamboo is plentiful, has a smooth surface and fine skin. It is easy and convenient to carve bamboos. The carvings are clear to read and remain so for the life of the bamboo. These conditions are met: writable, readable, and relatively maintainable. Stones with a sharp point can be the tool. In prehistoric society, perhaps nothing was more suitable for developing writing than living bamboo and stone. It is natural to write in vertical columns on the round, narrow surface of the stems that grow upright.

Living bamboos may be prime candidates for script. One question is: did people start writing on them before they did on the bamboo strips that were cut from them? It is quite possible that our ancestors began using stone tools to carve them in the beginning, long before the advent of ink and brush. That is the simplest way of writing in its broad sense. In early times, people could plant bamboos in front of their houses for a variety of uses. People also carved symbols on them for drawing and engraving. Later, people discovered that the writings can be migrated to bamboo strips. The carvings on bamboos alive at that time can be plentiful. It is difficult to know the number of texts and their complexity. They should already be sequenced vertically. Before the bamboo drains, there should be at least ‘sentences’ written on living bamboos. Later writings on bamboo leaf and book inherited the verticality.

Living bamboos and bamboo leaves carried the lost origin of Chinese writing.

However, the symbols on the living bamboo cannot last into our generation. Many materials cannot be kept for that long. Typically, research on the history of writing is based on archaeological finds and written records. Ancient carvings predating bamboo slip on living bamboo seem never to have been mentioned. The script may have already migrated to the bamboo sheet before the earliest records. It is often difficult to create written (recorded, etc.) works with durable material and method. But it’s okay that most writings last only years/decades instead of hundreds of years or millennia. For most people, conservation for more than a hundred years was not desirable in most cases. Even today, with advanced preservation techniques, most published works would not be found a millennium later, not to mention personal writings.

The Oracle bone script is the undisputed oldest writing system in China dating back to the Shang dynasty. Oracle bones were mainly for divination for the royal house. Given their special purpose, the relative scarcity of bones and shells, and the relative difficulty of making the scripts, they should not be the most commonly used writing material at the time. The script was already fully developed, with no apparent predecessor. True writing in China could have existed much earlier. Records from other surviving media indicate that bamboo strips existed as early as the oracle bone writing period. There are Neolithic signs dating back a few millennia earlier. In these millennia, there were possibly many writings on bamboo leaves or living bamboos, upon which Chinese writing developed.

Conclusion

Carvings of living bamboo with stone tools may have given rise to Chinese writing. They fixed the Chinese system in the vertical direction that was later inherited by bamboo strips, paper books, etc.

References

[1], Tsuen-Hsuin Tsien. Written on Bamboo and Silk: The Beginnings of Chinese Books and Inscriptions. Second edition. University of Chicago Press. 2004. Page 204.