The Wholeness Of Chinese Language And Picture In The Pre-Qin Period

No matter modern or ancient times, in China or foreign countries, the discussion of the language-picture relationship is not a new or unitary topic. This relationship usually includes variables like literature, character, poetry, painting, etc. Different from the western Heterogeneous theory between poetry and painting, the ancient Chinese opinion emphasizes the harmonious language-picture relations of the same origin. From ancient times to21st century, the inner relations of the Chinese language and picture never really extinct. But the tie between the two is way stronger prehistory era.The Chinese Language-Picture relationship is fully embodied in various connections such as character vs. image, as well as literature vs. picture, etc. The two parties are inosculated as a whole in remote antiquity. After different stages, they gradually fell apart. In the ancient times when picture and characters are as one, works back then are regarded to have double properties, which are language and pictures. The originate of Chinese language is the result of the departure of characters and pictures. Since then, the two gradually become distinct, pictures started to symbolize then developed into a system of the Chinese Syllabary, on the other hand, the images including pictures went into the direction of decorative art and painting.In my thesis, I will look into the different stages of the wholeness of Chinese language and picture in the pre-Qin period, such as prehistoric rock art, prehistoric graphic character, bones and shells inscriptions, etc. Prehistoric rock art has the properties of both language and picture. The double-property attribution leads to the uniqueness of the prehistoric rock art. It can express a comprehensive and repeatable meaning. The development of the graphic character permeates into every major prehistoric culture, especially in the Bronze Age, the graphic character reached it’s maturity. Bones and shells inscriptions is based on pictures, but has been out of the stage of sole picture, developing into hieroglyph. The development of hieroglyph shows how language and picture started out united then gradually became separated. In this article, I will analyze the image and meaning of hieroglyph character "human" in order to showcase the double properties of hieroglyph.The wholeness of Chinese language and picture in pre-Qin age has great impact on the later generations. These impacts include the theory of Calligraphy and painting developing from the same origin, the graphic arts of the Chinese Calligraphy as well as the pictographic characters of Chinese. It still plays a tremendous role in modern artistic calligraphy and graphic design.