Origins of the Chinese Scripts (Hanzi)
Since times immemorial, there have been different versions about the origin of the Chinese scripts (Hanzi), with almost all ancient writers ascribing it to a gentleman called Cangjie.
Cangjie was a divine being with unusual facial features that seemed to be like a picture of writings. In replication of his own image, the man created the first written characters of Chinese language. Apart from this, some of the books also depict the tale that millet fell down from the heavens in the form of rain and the spirits screamed every night to mourn the leak of the divine secret of Chinese scripts (Hanzi).
Yet another story describes that Cangjie was inspired by the footprints of beasts, birds, and animals that motivated him to create these characters.
Logically, stories such as these cannot be acknowledged as truth. A script is actually developed by people, over the years, to meet the requirements of their social lives. Cangjie is known to have standardized and sorted out the Chinese characters, and he is also considered to be the sole inventor of these characters.
A collection of primeval tombs has been found in recent years at Luxian County. These tombs date back to thousands of years and are said to be part of the Dawenkou Culture. Along with the huge numbers of relics, there are more than a dozen wine vessels which have certain characters engraved in them. These typesets have been established to be pictures of objects. Consequently, they are known as pictographs. There structure and style are pretty close to the engravings or designs on the shells and oracle bones, and hence they further antedate the latter with thousands of years.
These pictographs are also known to be the earliest type of Chinese written characters (called Hanzi) and possess the distinctiveness of Chinese scripts (Hanzi). Precisely speaking, Chinese scripts normally have characters that are suggested than realized as they are the most difficult scripts to learn.
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