Sìtǐ shūshì 四體書勢
Forces of the Four Scripts by 衛恆 (Wèi Héng, ?–291, 西晉, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A theoretical treatise on the four major Chinese script-types — gǔwén 古文 (archaic script), zhuàn 篆 (seal script), lì 隸 (clerical script), and cǎo 草 (cursive script) — by Wèi Héng 衛恆 (?–291), Western-Jìn senior official and second-generation member of the great Hédōng Wèi 河東衛氏 calligraphic lineage. The work is preserved entire in Jìn shū 36 (biography of Wèi Guàn, with Wèi Héng appended) and is the single most important premodern Chinese source on early calligraphic theory, since it incorporates verbatim earlier shì-rhapsodies that would otherwise be lost: Cuī Yuàn’s 崔瑗 Cǎoshū shì 草書勢 (the earliest extant theoretical statement on cursive), Cài Yōng’s 蔡邕 Zhuàn shì 篆勢 and the (lost) Lì shì 隸勢, plus Wèi Héng’s own Gǔwén shì 古文勢 and his concluding Lìshū shì 隸書勢.
Abstract
The Sìtǐ shūshì opens with a historical survey beginning from the cosmogonic moment of Cāng Jié’s 倉頡 invention of writing and the liùshū 六書 (six categories of character formation: zhǐshì, xiàngxíng, xíngshēng, huìyì, zhuǎnzhù, jiǎjiè), running through the Qín standardisation of xiǎozhuàn under Lǐ Sī 李斯, the Hàn discovery of gǔwén manuscripts in Confucius’s wall under Hàn Wǔdì, the WángMǎng liùshū reform, the Hàn calligraphers Cuī Yuàn, Cuī Shí 崔寔, Zhāng Zhī 張芝 (the Cǎoshèng), and Wèi Héng’s own family — Wèi Jì 衛覬, Wèi Guàn 衛瓘 — down to his own time. Each script-type is then introduced by a short historical-genealogical narrative followed by a shì 勢 (rhapsody on its visual force): the Gǔwén shì (Wèi Héng’s own composition), the Zhuàn shì (citing Cài Yōng), the Lì shì (citing Cài Yōng), and the Cǎoshū shì (citing Cuī Yuàn). The text closes with Wèi Héng’s own Lìshū shì. The Sìtǐ shūshì thus functions both as the earliest systematic Chinese script-history and as a preservation-anthology of late-Hàn / WèiJìn calligraphic theory: of the five shì-rhapsodies it includes, four would otherwise survive only as later citation-fragments. Modern philology (e.g. Qǐ Gōng 啟功, Gǔdài shūfǎ lùnwénjí; Cuī Ěrpíng 崔爾平, Lìdài shūfǎ lùnwén xuǎn) treats the work as the foundational document of the entire premodern Chinese calligraphic-theoretical tradition. The composition date is bracketed by Wèi Héng’s death in 291; an upper bracket of c. 270 reflects the earliest plausible date by which Wèi could have completed his official career and undertaken substantial scholarly composition.
Translations and research
- Holzman, Donald. “Shen Yo’s Sung-shu in the Light of the Wei chih.” Asia Major, n.s., 6 (1957–58): 70–106. [Treats the Jìn shū transmission context.]
- Barnhart, Richard M. “Wei Fu-jen’s Pi Chen T’u and the Early Texts on Calligraphy.” Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America 18 (1964): 13–25. [Treats the Sì-tǐ shū-shì as the principal early text against which the much-doubted Bǐ-zhèn tú must be set.]
- Ledderose, Lothar. Mi Fu and the Classical Tradition of Chinese Calligraphy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
- McNair, Amy. The Upright Brush: Yan Zhenqing’s Calligraphy and Song Literati Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998.
- Cuī Ěr-píng 崔爾平 (ed.). Lì-dài shū-fǎ lùn-wén xuǎn 歷代書法論文選. Shàng-hǎi shū-huà chū-bǎn-shè, 1979 (rev. 2014). [The Sì-tǐ shū-shì is the third item; the standard modern annotated text.]
- Qǐ Gōng 啟功 et al. (ed.). Gǔ-dài shū-fǎ lùn-wén-jí 古代書法論文集. Beijing: Wén-wù chū-bǎn-shè, 1995.
Other points of interest
The Sìtǐ shūshì preserves the verbatim text of Cuī Yuàn’s 崔瑗 (78–143) Cǎoshū shì 草書勢 — the single earliest theoretical statement on Chinese cursive script — which would otherwise be lost. The four-script taxonomy of the work (gǔwén, zhuàn, lì, cǎo) became the standard taxonomy of Chinese script-history; Xǔ Shèn’s 許慎 Shuōwén jiězì postscript and the Hàn shū · Yìwén zhì underlie Wèi Héng’s account, but the Sìtǐ shūshì is the work through which the schema reached subsequent calligraphic thought.