Study On The Calligraphic Styles Of Gansu Bamboo Slips

The Han Dynasty is a grand chapter of Chinese calligraphy history. During this period, calligraphy developed at an unprecedented speed and changed variously.The style of calligraphy also showed a totally different pattern in the process of development, which has a profound influence on the calligraphy of later ages.Before the bamboo books of Han unearthed, people’s knowledge about the calligraphy of Han Dynasty was mainly from the characters on the stone inscriptions of Han, which showed the process of transfer of the style from seal script to clerical script, but failed in showing the strength in writing these characters and failed in showing working people’s writing styles during the period of Two Hans Dynasties. Furthermore, most of Han tablet inscriptions were seal cut in the Eastern Han Dynasty, tablet inscriptions from the Western Han Dynasty were scarce. As a result, before the bamboo books of Han unearthed in the20th century, people’s knowledge of the development of Han Calligraphy remained in the stage of speculation and extrapolation because there were not enough evidence to prove it. Unearthing the bamboo books of Han filled the gap in the history of calligraphy.Since the earthshakingdiscovery of bamboo slips in Dunhuang in the beginning of the20th century, lots of study and researches had been made by scholars, also along with imitation and practices. The discovery of the bamboo books of Han gave us a deeper understanding of the daily life of the Two Hans Dynasties and their calligraphy habit.The province Gansu enjoys the fame of "hometown of bamboo book of Han" where nearly four fifths of the bamboo slips across the nation were unearthed. Apart from the well-known Dunhuang and Juyanbamboo slips, there are also Wuwei and Gangubamboo slips which were unearthed from Han Dynasty tombs. These bamboo slips are rich in quantity and variety. They have played an important role in the study of the culture and customs of the Two Hans Dynasties.From these bamboo slips, we not only can get a clear view of the process of style transformation from Qin Fragrance to simplified clerical script, cursive, and the appearance of running script and regular script, and the characteristics of different calligraphy styles, but also can have lots of discussions on the forms of the bamboo slips and the styles of writings, as well as verification on the tools used in writing bamboo slips. Through these angles, this paperwill discuss the development of the calligraphic styles of the bamboo books of Han and their influencing factors.Make a thorough inquiry of the calligraphic styles of bamboo slips during the Two Hans Dynasties, and reproduce the calligraphic styles of the bamboo slips of Gansu province.