Generally speaking, the merchants used Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the Zhou people used Oracle Bone Inscriptions (let's call it Zhou Zhuan Shu), and the vassal states that were enfeoffed in the early Zhou Dynasty also used official seals. By the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, fonts had changed for hundreds of years due to the separatist regime in various countries. After Qin Shihuang unified the whole country, he was slightly reorganized and reunified.
Give birth to a tadpole
In Danzhu Township, Xianju County, Zhejiang Province, there is a towering Weiqiang Mountain with thousands of peaks. It is a very important scenic spot at the provincial level, with staggered valleys, dense ancient trees, faint bamboo forests, flowing water and picturesque scenery in all seasons. Among them, there is an unfathomable human landscape: a steep cliff named Tadpole Cliff is covered with strange patterns and symbols such as sun pattern, moon pattern, insect pattern and fish pattern. , are all hand-carved. This is a famous tadpole inscription, which is said to have been carved by Dayu. Why did the ancients carve words on the cliff? What are the meanings of these graphic symbols? For thousands of years, countless people with lofty ideals and literati have gone to explore the strange.
According to Records of Wanli and Guangxu, during the Eastern Jin Dynasty, a Tingwei surnamed Zhou "made a flying ladder out of wax to imitate it, but I didn't know what it meant". Later, the county magistrate Ruan Lu and the county magistrate Sean also "showed it to the public", but they broke up in discord because of the high cliff and dangerous road. Sean left it and sighed, "Last year, I went to the map of Wei Qiang, and there were immortal ancient seal characters in the cloud. There is no way to dry the rock. I don't know what the word tadpole is ... "
During the period of 1985, Taizhou cultural relics investigation and acceptance team used a 28-200mm zoom camera to zoom in on the cliff face at a long distance and decompose it point by point, which seemed to show traces. 1On May 26th, 994, the expedition organized by "Anzhou Film and Television Art Society" hired three generations of mountaineer Pan Yulong, who collected rare medicinal materials and wild Dendrobium for a living and had many years of mountaineering experience. He hung down from the top of the cliff and took many pictures less than one meter away from the high cliff. According to Pan Yulong's narration and photos, the Tadpole Cliff is flat, about 40 meters long and 50 meters wide. It is a very regular rectangle with an area of nearly 2,000 square meters. The cliff face of the precipice is hard, covered with protruding hemispheres, about 5 cm higher than the cliff face, with diameters ranging from 7- 12 cm. At the edge of each hemisphere, there is a small circular groove about 2 cm deep. The two hemispheres are about 15 cm apart, arranged in an orderly way, and seem to have traces of patterns of the sun, the moon, insects and marine life.
After the investigation results were published in the newspaper, it aroused great interest of scholars at home and abroad. But there are different opinions on the conclusion. Some people think that this is the writing left by the ancient She nationality. Some people associate it with Xiatang people who lived in Xianju six or seven thousand years ago and think it is the remains of our ancestors. The local people passed down from generation to generation is the moment of Yu Xia's water control; Some people hold a negative attitude. They don't think tadpoles exist at all. This is a myth. Others are imaginative and say that it is a masterpiece left by aliens. Of course, limited by the times and conditions, what Zhou Tingwei raised has not been preserved so far. The precious photos taken by "Anzhou Film Art Society" are too far away to see clearly, giving people the impression that they are just a white cliff face.
According to People's Daily, at present, eight mysterious original characters or symbols have been found in China. That is, Cangheshu, which is suspected to be an ancient book, Hongyan Tianshu and Yelang Tianshu in Guizhou, Bashu symbols unearthed in Sichuan, Dongba script found in Yunnan, Gulou tablet in Shaoxing Yusi, and tadpoles in Xianju. Among the above eight languages, the tadpole language in Xianju is the earliest from the time of discovery. In Linhai Collection, the first local chronicle of China written by Sun in the Southern Dynasties, Weiqiang Mountain is called "the stone wall is like a tadpole". "Twenty-four History" Song Zhou Shu's "Junzhi" is also called "Tianmu Mountain (another name for Weiqiang Mountain) is connected with Kuocang Mountain, and there are seals on the stone wall, which are too high to be recognized." From the difficulty of explanation, tadpoles are the most important. The other seven words are obvious to all, either in books or unearthed objects, or written in wood and stone, or engraved on stone tablets or stone walls. However, the writing of tadpoles is chaotic, and its seal script rubbings have not been seen so far.
According to the textual research of ancient Chinese characters experts, Tadpole Book, also known as Tadpole Seal, Tadpole Seal and Tadpole Bird Trace, is a kind of writing and an ancient Chinese font. Many strokes, big head and small tail, shaped like tadpoles, hence the name. The name tadpole appeared only after the Han Dynasty, referring to the ancient prose in the pre-Qin period. Therefore, if tadpoles can be found in Weiqiang Mountain, "it will be a great blessing for academic circles and of great significance to the study of ancient Chinese characters".
Tadpole characters, which often appear in ancient legends in China, originally refer to the characters used by immortals, and later refer to unknown ancient characters. It is also a common name of Yi language that Yi people still use today.