Old Chinese - History

History

  Late Shang     Western Zhou     Spring and Autumn     Warring States     Qin, Han         oracle bones     bronze inscriptions,
early transmitted texts     bronze inscriptions,
classic texts         | -1300 | -1200 | -1100 | -1000 | -900 | -800 | -700 | -600 | -500 | -400 | -300 | -200 | -100

Timeline of periods of early Chinese history and available texts (all dates BC)

The earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at a site near modern Anyang identified as Yin, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1200 BC. These are the oracle bones, short inscriptions carved on tortoise plastrons and ox scapulae for divinatory purposes, as well as a few brief bronze inscriptions. The language written is undoubtedly an early form of Chinese, but is difficult to interpret due to the limited subject matter and high proportion of proper names. Only half of the 4,000 characters used have been identified with certainty. Little is known about the grammar of this language, but it seems much less reliant on grammatical particles than Classical Chinese.

From early in the Western Zhou period, around 1000 BC, the most important recovered texts are bronze inscriptions, many of considerable length. Even longer pre-Classical texts on a wide range of subjects have also been transmitted through the literary tradition. The oldest parts of the Book of Documents, the Classic of Poetry and the I Ching also date from the early Zhou period, and closely resemble the bronze inscriptions in vocabulary, syntax and style. A greater proportion of this more varied vocabulary has been identified than for the oracular period.

The four centuries preceding the unification of China in 221 BC (the later Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period) constitute the Chinese classical period in the strict sense. There are many bronze inscriptions from this period, but they are vastly outweighed by a rich literature written in ink on bamboo and wooden strips and (toward the end of the period) silk. Although these are perishable materials, and many books were destroyed in the Burning of the Books in the Qin dynasty, other texts have been transmitted as copies. Such works from this period as the Analects, the Classic of Filial Piety, the Mencius and the Commentary of Zuo have been admired as models of prose style since the Han dynasty. The Classical Chinese language of such works formed the basis of Literary Chinese, which remained the written standard until the early twentieth century.