SEAL SCRIPT
According to legend,
Chinese characters were invented earlier by Cangjie (c. 2650 BC), a bureaucrat
under the legendary emperor, Huangdi. The legend tells that Cangjie studied the
animals of the world, the landscape of the earth, and the stars in the sky, and
invented a symbolic system called zi – Chinese characters. It was said that on
the day the characters were born, Chinese heard the devil mourning, and saw
crops falling like rain, as it marked the beginning of civilization, for good
and for bad.
The oldest script that is
still in use today is the Seal Script. It evolved organically out of the Zhou
bronze script, and was adopted in a standardized form under the first Emperor
of China, Qin Shi Huang. The seal
script, as the name suggests, is now only used in artistic seals. Few people
are still able to read it effortlessly today, although the art of carving a
traditional seal in the script remains alive; some calligraphers also work in
this style.
NOTE;
Cursive script and Hiragana.
The Cursive Script is not
in general use, and is a purely artistic calligraphic style. The basic
character shapes are suggested, rather than explicitly realized, and the
abbreviations are extreme. The Japanese Hiragana script is derived from Cursive
Script.