Daomu Biji: Wu Xie’s Private Notes - Chapter 27: The Warring States Silk Book

In the Warring States Period, there was a type of script that used silk as the writing material. It was known as a “silk book” and was made of a white silk fabric. In the Han Dynasty, silk fabrics were generally referred to as silk or “zeng” (1), or collectively called zeng silk, so silk books were also called zeng books.

The earliest known silk book in China was discovered in the tomb of Chu in Changsha in the 1930s.

A large number of bamboo and wood slips have been unearthed in recent years. For example, the Wuli Stele in Changsha, Hunan, found in 1951. The Yangtianhu Tomb in Changsha in 1954. The Yangjiawan Tomb in Changsha in 1954. The Xintaiwan Tomb in Henan in 1957. The Qin Tomb in Yunmengsuidi, Hubei in 1975. The Tomb of Haojiaping in Qingchuan, Sichuan in 1980. A large number of bamboo and wood slips from the Warring States period had been excavated from these tombs. In addition, there were silk books unearthed from the Chu Tomb in Changsha in 1942 (introduced into the United States in 1945), and Shanxi Houma Alliance books.

Whether it was bamboo slips or silk fabrics, they were all handwritten items from the Warring States Period. Not only were these bamboo and silk ink markings precious cultural relics, but they also had important historical value for studying the history of calligraphy.

Four Silk Book—also known as the Chu Silk Manuscript—was divided into three parts, namely celestial phenomena, catastrophes, and rotation of the four seasons and monthly taboos. The content was rich and complex. It not only contained the myths, legends, and customs circulating in the Chu region, but also contained thoughts on Yin and Yang, the Five Elements, and the interaction between heaven and man.

There were twelve weird idols painted around the text, and the four corners of the silk book had trees painted in four colors: red, green, white, and black.

In terms of the calligraphy of the silk book, the order of the sentences was generally neat, and the spacing was basically the same. It showed natural and unrestrained colors while striving to be standardized and neat.

The font of the text was flat and stable, balanced and symmetrical, upright and serious. It was somewhere between a seal and a scripture. Its brushwork was round and smooth with straight twists and turns and challenging curves. It was beautiful in the changes in thickness, and displayed harmonious feelings in the way the characters were written. It fully demonstrated the writer’s deliberate pursuit of art.

The images on the silk book were placed around the text, first drawn with thin lines, and then painted in flat colors. They appeared to have been drawn casually, but the twelve gods were depicted in different poses and looked vivid. They either stood, lay down, ran, or jumped, all looking very lifelike.

At the same time, the painted gods also showed strong realism. The markings on some of the gods were painted in realistic detail, as if they had been lifted straight from tigers and leopards. In particular, the trees painted around the silk book were shaped like real objects, and the numerous branches and leaves looked like they were swaying. It could be said that the penmanship and strokes weren’t stingy at all.

Not only is the Chu Silk Manuscript a treasure of ancient Chinese art, but it’s also a rare historical treasure of art worldwide.

──From Baidu Baike

The original

Just some random “restored” copy

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TN Notes:

(1) “Zeng” was an ancient term for silk fabrics in Chinese.

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Merebear note: Those pictures aren’t actually in Wu Xie’s notes as far as I could tell, but I figured you all would like a visual. First pic is an original and the second one is a colored version I guess someone made. I just included it so you could kind of see what Wu Xie was talking about since the pictures on the original are practically ineligible lol