Cangjie

Summary

Cangjie 倉頡 is the scribe and historian of Huangdi in early Chinese tradition, the man who made Chinese writing after seeing the tracks that birds and beasts leave on the ground. His name is also written 蒼頡, with the graph meaning blue-green, and the sound is the same.

Xu Shen 許慎 tells the story in stages in the preface to his dictionary, the Shuowen jiezi, early in the second century. When Bao Xi, that is Fuxi, ruled, he looked at the images in the sky, the patterns of the earth and the markings of birds and beasts, and made the eight trigrams, the bagua. Then Shennong governed by knotted cords. When affairs multiplied and deceit sprouted, Cangjie, Huangdi's historian, saw the tracks of the feet of birds and beasts, understood that their lines could be told apart from one another, and made the first writing. With it all the crafts were put in order and all things were examined. His first writing was pictures of things in their shapes, and so was called wén 文, pattern; later shape and sound were joined, and the result was called zì 字, because characters breed as children do.

The Chinese did not tell this story only with joy. The eighth chapter of the Huainanzi says: when Cangjie made writing, heaven rained millet and the ghosts wailed at night; when Boyi dug the well, the dragons rose into the dark clouds and the spirits took refuge on Kunlun. And it concludes: the more skill there is, the thinner virtue becomes. Huainanzi 8. Wang Chong, in the Lunheng, says that "short books and popular records" tell that Cangjie had four eyes and was Huangdi's historian.

The idea his story turns on is that writing is the reading of a trace. Birds and beasts walk and leave lines in the mud, and the hunter knows from them who has passed; Cangjie saw that these lines differ, and gave each thing a line unlike any other. A mark that once told of an animal passing came to tell of a word. With these marks the work of people was put in order, but the Huainanzi sees the day they were made as a day when the ghosts wept, because people gained something new and lost something of their simplicity.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method. The first syllable 倉 was *tsʰˤaŋ in Old Chinese, a hissing sound followed by a nasal made at the back of the mouth, the letters of Arabic sanna. The second syllable 頡 is read het in the old rhyme books, and Starostin's database of Chinese characters gives it as *ghīt in Old Chinese and ɣiǝ̄t under the Eastern Han: a voiced sound from the back of the mouth, like Arabic gh, then t, the letters of khaṭṭa once kh answers its voiced partner. In Lane sanna is "he instituted, established, or prescribed a custom, set the example of it, originated it as a custom to be followed by others after him", and sanna al-ṭīn is "he made the clay into pottery"; khaṭṭa is "he made a line, or lines, or a mark, upon the ground", khaṭṭa bi-rijlihi al-arḍ "he walked", and "he wrote with the reed". On this reading Cangjie is sanna al-khaṭṭ, "he instituted the line": the first to make writing a custom that people follow, which is what the Shuowen jiezi says of him: he saw the lines that feet leave on the ground and made writing from them.

Linguistic Root

The first graph varies between 倉, granary, and 蒼, blue-green, which shows that writers took the syllable for its sound, not its meaning; the two are read alike. The Kangxi dictionary gives 頡 the rhyme-book reading het, lists among its senses that it is a name, citing Cangjie as the title of a book in the Han bibliography, and quotes Wei Heng, in the third century, saying that Huangdi's two historians, Jusong and Cangjie, gazed at the tracks of birds and made writing.

In the comparison with sanna, s takes the place of the affricate ts, since s, ṣ, z and sh form one group, and n takes the place of the back nasal, as in the readings of Gonggong and lóng. In khaṭṭa, kh takes the place of the voiced back sound that became h in Middle Chinese, and in the Juthoor laws kh becomes h, k or g in other languages; ṭ takes the place of the final t, and the doubled ṭ is read as one. The Baxter and Sagart list gives no Old Chinese form for 頡, and Starostin's database supplies one, *ghīt, which has the two consonants the reading needs in their order, said with gh under the Han. The weak points that remain are that kh is voiceless where the Chinese sound is voiced, and that the reading makes the name a phrase of verb and object.

The rereading essay does not read the name; it reads his four eyes, as in the Symbolic Reading below.

Key Mythic Narratives

Private and public

The Han Feizi says: when Cangjie made writing, he took what encircles itself as the sign for "private", and what turns its back on the private as the sign for "public"; private and public oppose each other, and Cangjie knew it from the start. The Shuowen jiezi quotes the same saying in explaining the sign for "private". In this account writing divides what belongs to the individual from what belongs to the community from its first signs.

The man given to one thing

The Xunzi says: many loved writing, but only Cangjie's name was handed down, because he gave himself to it alone, just as many loved farming but only Houji's name was handed down.

The Cangjie primer

In the same preface the Shuowen jiezi says that Li Si, chancellor of the first Qin emperor, wrote a book for unifying the script and called it the Cangjie Chapter, so the man's name became the name of a primer from which boys learned their characters. Xu Shen complains of scholars of his day who claimed that the clerks' script of the Qin was the writing of Cangjie's time and explained characters from their late shapes.

Symbolic Reading

The rereading essay sets Cangjie in its table of the first emperors and kings as the inventor of Chinese characters, and reads his four eyes as "doubled careful observation": the scholar sees what others do not see. The story supports that reading in its own way: writing began for him with looking at footprints, as Fuxi's trigrams began with looking at sky and earth, so each of them saw an order in something people pass by without stopping. The Huainanzi reads the story another way: every new craft gives people a power and takes something from them, so heaven rains millet and the ghosts weep; it is among the clearest statements of the price of a gift among the culture heroes.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In Plato's Phaedrus the Egyptian Thoth invents letters and offers them to King Thamus as a remedy for memory and wisdom, and the king answers that they will bring forgetfulness to those who learn them, because they will rely on signs outside themselves. In the Huainanzi the ghosts weep on the day Cangjie makes writing, and the book says that the more skill there is, the thinner virtue becomes. Both stories make writing a gift with a price; they part in that Thoth is a god, while Cangjie is the human scribe of a king.

In Babylon and Assyria Nabu is the god of writing and of scribes, Marduk's son in later tradition, whom kings ask to write them a long reign. Cangjie is Huangdi's scribe and historian, so in both accounts writing stands at the king's side; but Nabu writes what is to be, and Cangjie writes what is.

Odin takes up the runes after hanging nine nights on the tree, and lifts them up screaming: in the North the letters are won through pain, in China by looking at the tracks of birds and beasts.

The Greeks ascribe their letters to the Phoenician Cadmus, who came from Tyre and founded Thebes, as the Chinese ascribe writing to Cangjie; see Cadmus.