Cangjie (traditional Chinese: 倉頡; simplified Chinese: 仓颉; pinyin: Cāngjié) is a legendary figure in
ancient China,
claimed to be an official historian of the Yellow
Emperor (Huangdi) and the inventor of the Chinese
characters. Legend has it that he had four eyes and eight pupils, and that
when he invented the characters, the deities and ghosts cried and the sky
rained millets.
He is not considered to be a historical figure, or at least, not considered to
be sole inventor of Chinese characters.
Legend of
character creation
Shortly after unifying China, Huangdi, being terribly dissatisfied with his "rope knot tying"
method of recording information, charges Cangjie with
the task of creating characters for writing. Cangjie then settles down on the bank of a river, and
devotes himself to the completion of the task at hand. After devoting much time
and effort, however, he's unable to create even one character. One day, Cangjie suddenly sees a phoenix flying in the sky above,
carrying an object in its beak. The object falls to the ground directly in
front of Cangjie, and he discovers it to be an
impression of a hoof-print. Not being able to recognize which animal the print
belonged to, he asked for the help of a local hunter passing by on the road.
The hunter told him that this was, without a doubt, the hoof-print of a PiXiu,
being different from the hoof-print of any other beast alive. His conversation
with the hunter greatly inspired Cangjie, leading him
to believe that if he could capture in a drawing the special characteristics
that set apart each and every thing on the earth, this would truly be the
perfect kind of character for writing. From that day forward, Cangjie paid close attention to the characteristics of all
things, including the sun, moon, stars, clouds, lakes, oceans, as well as all
manner of bird and beast. He began to create characters according to the
special characteristics he found, and before long, had compiled a long list of
characters for writing. To the delight of the Yellow
Emperor, Cangjie presented him with the complete
set of characters. The emperor then called the premiers of each of the nine
provinces together in order for Cangjie to teach them
this new writing system. Monuments and temples were erected in Cangjie's honor on the bank of the river where he created
these characters.
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