Page 206 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

224 Draft script, ti'ao-thu. Ch'cn Shun
( 1 4$ 3-1 544), pan of the inscription on
t% j& >\% his Studies from Lift, I j j8. Handscroll.
Ink on paper. Ming Dynasty.
Dynasty. After the fall of the Shang, this script, which got its
forms most probably from writing on clay with a stylus, evolved
into the monumental "big seal" (ta-chuan) script seen on the long
bronze inscriptions of the middle Chou period.
As China expanded and fragmented during the Warring States
period, regional variants of the ta-chuan script developed. By the
third century B.C. the ta-chuan had evolved into the more refined
hsiao-chuan ("small seal"), which became the otFicial script of the
223 Clerical script, li-tku. Rubbing
from a scone slab. Han style. After Ch'in Dynasty. The "small seal" script went out of fashion in the
Dnscoll and Toda.
Han Dynasty, but it still survives in modern times for seal-carving
and the occasional formal inscription, to which it lends an antique
flavour. At the same time a new style was evolving, the U-sku
("clerical script"), based not on the even line of the stylus but on
225 Regular script, k'ai-ihu. Emperor the free, pliant movement of the brush, in which the strokes vary
Hui-tsung (reigned 1 101-1 125), part of
his Poem on the Ptony. written in the in thickness and weight, and angles are accentuated by the turn of
"thin gold" (shou-ihin) style. the brush. Examples of li-shu freely written on bamboo slips of
Handscroll. Ink on paper. Sung
Dynasty.

186