The
Discovery of the Lạc Việt’s Writing in Guangxi
Việt Tử
I- Introduction :
Ancient Chinese historians reported that the Nation Việt
Thường offered Emperor Yao a 1.000 year-old tortoise which carried on its back
an inscription in tadpole-like writing (chữ con nòng nọc=chữ khoa đẩu) summarizing
things after the creation of the world. However, the Chinese never let the
Vietnamese know the shape of these characters for more than 3.000 years. In the
contrary, all Chinese historians
maintained that the ancestors of Tráng people, who were the Lạc Việt, did not
have the writing. Most of the educated Vietnamese people believed firmly that
the Vietnamese had their own writing before the Chinese imperialists conquered
their country for more than one thousand years. Unfortunately, they did not
have the convincing evidence of such writing because the Chinese destroyed all
the evidence during more than one thousand year under their domination and failed attempt to sinize the Vietnamese
people.
On December 2011, Lí Nhĩ Chân announced the Society of
Research of the Lạc Việt Culture in the Guangxi province have rediscovered one
thousand ideograms of the Lạc Việt writing in Guangxi province. He said the ancient
Lạc Việt had invented the writing in 4.000 BC– 6.000 BC. The discovery of the Lạc
Việt writing this time will re-write the history of China ‘s writing because
the culture of the Lạc Việt people was the most influential culture in ancient
China.
II- The Writing of the Lạc Việt People in Guangxi Province
Lí Nhĩ Chân announced that the Society of Research of the Lạc
Việt Culture has rediscovered the ancient scripts of the Lạc Việt people at the
District Bình Quả in Guangxi province on December 22, 2011. The scripts at the
archeological site of ritual celebration “xẻng đá lớn”Cảm Tang, in the city Mã Đầu,
District Bình Quả, Guangxi province
were
inscribed on many fragments of “xẻng đá lớn”. Besides, the
Research Society has also found many badges
and paints of the ancient Lạc Việt in the mountain Đa Minh in Guangxi province.
The Head of the House of Artifacts at Guangxi, Chairperson of the Board of
Evaluation of Artifacts, Tưởng Đình Du, recognized
the badges and paints made for ritual
celebration of the ancient Lạc Việt at the time of the new stone age. The
national expert team of the government evaluated the scripts at the apogee
of cultural xẻng đá lớn (4.000 BC – 6.000 BC).
The Lạc Việt writing was earlier than the Oracle Bone Scripts at the end of the
Shang Dynasty by more than 1.000 years and earlier than the pre-Oracle Bone
Scripts inscribed on the animal bones of
Đông Di people in Sơn Đông province and had
the close origin with the writing of 250.000 Vietnamese-related ethnic Thủy in
Quý Châu.
The Society of Research of the Lạc Việt Culture wrote : “
The Lạc Việt people in China invented the
writing in four thousand years in the ancient time erased the notion that the
ancestors of the Tráng people, who were the Lạc Việt, did not have the writing.
The discovery of the Lạc Việt writing this time will re-write the history of
the China’s writing because the Lạc Việt culture was the most prominent in the
ancient China.
Before this event, all Chinese historians kept saying that the
ancestors of Tráng people did not have the writing.. The chairperson of the Research Society
of the Lạc Việt Culture, Tạ Thọ Cầu,
introduced the member experts of the Research Society who collected a great number of artifacts
proving that the ancient Lạc Việt had invented their ideograms in four thousand
years BC . These ideograms dated back to the early time of new stone age starting at the apogee of the cultural “xẻng đá
lớn” (4.000 BC – 6.000 BC) and surely had the close origin with the Oracle Bone
Scripts and the writing of the Thủy people.
Figure 1a : Piece of stone inscribed with Lạc Việt writing at Bình Quả in Guangxi.
Figure 1b : Schema of the figure (1a) with Lạc Việt writing in Guangxi.
(a = Mộc, b = Sĩ, c = Xuất, d = Chấp, e = Công)
Above the fingers holding the piece
of stone (Fig. 1a), we recognize the
following inscription of characters (see Fig. 1b) :
a=Mộc (tree) which resembles the
characters on the bronze objects of Đông Sơn in Vietnam dating back to 2.000 BC
(Fig. 3).
b=Sĩ (educated
people) on the small pottery disk (Fig. 2) found in the region of Hòa Bình
Culture in North Vietnam by Madelaine Colani (France) in 1923 dating back to
8.000 BC, the period in which the Chinese did not have their writing nor their
presence in Asia. This time frame eliminated categorically the Chinese writing on
this small pottery disk.
c=Xuất (export).
d=Chấp (twenty,
20).
e=Công (job,
worker).
The discovery of the Lạc Việt writing leads to very
important implications that we will discuss in details later because the Lạc Việt
scripts in Guangxi province included the characters inscribed on the bronze
objects of Đông Sơn (2000 BC), thoses on two small pottery disks found in the region of Hòa Bình Culture (8000 BC) and
the Oracle Bone Scripts at the end of Shang Dynasty (1300 BC).
The Vietnamese archeologists are very happy of the discovery of Lạc Việt writing, but its discovery was not some thing very suddenly unexpected because these experts have known many earlier data concerning these scripts :
1-The documents on
the potteries at the archeological site Bán Pha 2 in the province Sơn Tây
dating back to 12.000 BC.
2-The scripts
inscribed on the abdomen of tortoise at the archeological site Giả Hồ in the
province Hà Nam dating back to 9.000 BC.
3-Many scattered
characters found in Sơn Đông.
4-The
writing of the Vietnamese-related ethnics Thủy people, with 250.000 population
in Quý Châu..
The archeologist Hà Văn Thủy believed that these characters
have the following characteristics :
a-The characters
at the archeological sites Bán Pha 2 and Giả Hồ appeared well before the era
when Chinese imperialist leader Hiên Viên conquered the country of Bách Việt (2600 BC). These characters belonged, therefore, to the
Vietnamese who lived in the ancient China for 40.000 years BC.
b-All scripts Bán
Pha 2 and Giả Hồ and the writing of the Thủy people were close to the Oracle
Bone Scripts and Kim Văn (writing on bronze objects). Based on the principles of reading the Oracle Bone
Scripts, American experts have successfully read the documents on the potteries
Bán Pha 2.
c-The earliest and
simplest characters were found close to and “recalled” the latest and more
complicated ones which were Oracle Bone Scripts. This fact suggested that the pictograms in China had a gradual continous development from 12.000 BC to 15,000 BC.
By analyzing “rìu Cảm Tang”, we see the scripts of Cảm Tang
were more complicated than the characters of Bán Pha 2 and Giả Hồ, but simpler
than the Oracle Bone Scripts and Kim Văn. This fact leads to the hypothesis
that the system of Lạc Việt writing processed from that of Bán Pha 2 and Giả Hồ
to Cảm Tang, The question was where did
the scripts of Bán Pha 2 come from? One needs more archeological finds to understand
the evolution of the Vietnamese writing. However, based on what we already had,
we can theorize that the scripts of Bán Pha 2 came from rare symbols from the
stone plain Sapa. From the stone plain Sapa, groups of Vietnamese went west and north to Sơn
Tây, Thiểm Tây and left their writing on the old potteries of Bán Pha 2.
Other groups of Vietnamese went to Guangxi, Guangdong, then
crossed the Yangtze River to the region of Sơn Đông to form a big Vietnamese
community there. At the earliest period, the scripts of Bán Pha 2 and Giả Hồ
were simpler. At the later period, the scripts of Cảm Tang were much more
complicated. We believe the Oracle Bone Scripts and the characters on the
bronze at Anayang in Henan province, were the final development of the Lạc Việt
writing. It was the evolution of the Vietnamese writing by archeological artifacts.
We have the writing document called
Việt Tuyệt thư or
Việt Tuyệt
ký (also called
Việt Chép documenting
the Vietnamese history)
, a document
of the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC – 480 BC) before the
Records of the Grand Historian (ca.100
BC)
.
Sima Qian and other Chinese historians used Việt Tuyệt thư
as the historical source of the Bách Việt History and legendary history of the
ancient times. Việt Tuyệt thư recorded that the writing system and the
culture of the Shang Dynasty was the continuation of that of the Xia Dynasty. Confucius
(551 BC – 479 BC) taught students in Vietnamese language which was called at
that time “Nhã Ngữ” (Nhã is beautiful, Ngữ is Language). He wrote his book “Xuân
Thu” (Chronicle of the Warring States Period) in tadpole-like scripts according
to “Tân
thư Vệ Hằng truyện”. Therefore, Sima Qian should have written the history
of China in tadpole-like scripts too, which was called later in Chinese scripts by the Chinese
historians. Shi
Huangdi of Qin ordered to use Nhã Ngữ (Vietnamese language) to unify the
writing and language of the whole China until the Han Dynasty. In 40 AD, the
people of Red River Delta in the present Vietnam revolted against Chinese
overlordship, led by Two Sisters (Hai Bà Trưng), Ma Yuan was sent to Guangdong
province to organize suppression of the uprising. Ma Yuan spoke Vietnamese and
wrote Vietnamese. After the suppression of the uprising, Ma Yuan took with him
the Vietnamese Legal Codes (Bộ Việt Luật) written in square pictograms (chữ vuông tượng hình).
Ma Yuan sent 300 Vietnamese noble families to the South of Yangtze River region
for re-education while he organized the destruction of the Vietnamese writing
and language. These Vietnamese people had to learn these square pictograms
again later from the beginning. But at that time, these square pictograms were
called Chinese writing. Therefore,
the so-called Chinese writing were, in fact, the Vietnamese writing which was
changed to Chinese name. It was clear that the Chinese imperialists forced the
people to call these Vietnamese scripts the
Chinese characters.
We had many direct evidence that the Lạc Việt writing
belongs to the family of tadpole-like writing of the Bách Việt. The Lạc Việt
writing on the small piece of stone chosen by Lí Nhĩ Chân clearly showed the
same word Sĩ (Fig. 2)which was seen on the small pottery disk found in the region
of Hòa Bình Culture in Vietnam and the word Mộc (Fig. 3) written on the bronze objects of Đông Sơn also found in Vietnam. In
another words, the characters of Hòa Bình and Đông Sơn people were the continuing
development of the Lạc Việt writing. As we mentioned that the discovery of the Lạc Việt writing
generated many very important cultural and historical implications. The top implication of all is
the Origin of the Chinese Writing. The reasonable questions should be asked are: “Were the
Chinese writing and the tadpole-like writing two different writing systems or
the same ones? Where did the Chinese writing come from if it were different
from the tadpole-like writing? Why are the Chinese still in the active process
of looking for the origin of their writing after more than 3.000 years despite the fact that they identified the
Oracle Bone Scripts as the Shang Dynasty’s writing system? Were the Oracle Bone
Scripts invented by the Chinese? Did the Shang Dynasty really have a writing
system? To resolve these basic questions, we have to find out whether the Shang
Dynasty had a writing system? and the details of the Oracle Bone Scripts found in 1899 ?
III- Did the
Thương Dynasty have a writing system?
The answer is NO. Here are the historical and archeological reasons :
In 1600 BC, the Shang Dynasty, a nomad tribe of origin Turk
with a oral culture (no writing system) came from North West lived a nomad life
in Uyghur (Tân Cương) and Qinghai (Thanh Hải). They then invaded the land of Bách Việt later. They
had all the rights to take every thing including lands, wealth, culture and
writing of the conquered people. We had the writing document Việt Tuyệt thư (770 BC – 480 BC), a document before the Records of the Grand Historian (ca. 100
BC), which wrote that the writing system
and culture of the Shang Dynasty was
the continuation of that of the Xia Dynasty. This fact conformed with the
assertion of Professor Lương Kim Định that the culture of Trung Nguyên (ancient
China) was that of Di Việt. At the end of the Shang Dynasty, the culture was
not Chinese yet, but it still remained Di Việt. The fact that the Shang Dynasty did not have any writing system could be demonstrated scientifically and by history: Scientifically, Professor Vũ Thế Ngọc by analysing the Oracle Bone Scripts in 1899, demonstrated that the Oracle Bone Scripts were not invented in the Yangshao area during 3.000 years BC because there was no visible attempt to invent the Oracle Bone Scripts in the Yangshao area during these 3.000 years. They were probably left there by another people when they migrated through the area. This reason was the evidence that the Chinese did not invented the Oracle Bone Scripts as they claimed.
The history of the Shang Dynasty was written by the Zhou Dynasty many centuries after it destroyed the Shang Dynasty. The "Chinese skill" to create the pseudo-pictogram "Việt" in the form of an axe of the Shang Dynasty from the true pictogram Việt written with the "symbol rice" of the Vietnamese invention before the invasion of the Chinese. The "Chinese Scripts and Symbols" article of the Wikipedia wrote : "A major event in the history of Chinese script is the standardization of the writing by the First Emperor of Qin who unified China in 221 BC. Before that time, each of the many states in China had their own style and peculiarities which mean that, although mutually comprehensible, the scripts had many deviations. The First Emperor introduced the Qin script as the official writing."
This statement showed that before the Chinese invasion to the unification of China by Shi Hoangdi of Qin, the tadpole-like writing were used in all states of China. This was the clear evidence of lack any writing system during the reign of the Shang Dynasty.
The beginning of the Shang
Dynasty to take over the Vietnamese writing was marked by the Chinese creation
of the pseudo-pictogram "Việt" by “skillfully” detaching the tail of the
pictogram Việt bộ Mễ ( pictogram Việt written with a special symbol called “symbol
Mễ” or “symbol rice”) of the invention of the Vietnamese people to mark
their earliest and greatest discovery of water rice in the world and establishment
of the agriculture of rice before the
Chinese invasion of the land of Bách Việt in 1600 BC. Was the pseudo-pictogram
Việt in the form of an axe of the Shang Dynasty invented by the Chinese (Fig. 6)? No, the Chinese under the
Shang Dynasty just detached the inferior portion of this pictogram Việt bộ Mễ 
invented by the Vietnamese people. They created
a pseudo-pictogram and forced the people to call it Việt for their well planned
purpose (see Fig. 6).
Figure 6 : The pseudo-pictogram in the form of an axe in Shang Dynasty by "skillfully"
detaching the inferior part of the Vietnamese pictogram written with a "symbol rice".
That truth was revealed by the words of Bình Nguyên Lộc who
described the pictogram Việt in the form of an axe of the Shang Dynasty in his
book “
The Malaysian Origin of the
Vietnamese People”. He wrote (Page 154-157) : “
The original word Việt was very strange : a long horizontal straight
line and a hook underneath it. It was
the word Việt at the end of the Shang
Dynasty and the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, nobody knew how it looked like
under the Xia Dynasty because no archeological artifacts were found in the Xia
Dynasty, nobody knew whether it had any writing system or not. This simple word
Việt was certainly the tail of the second word Việt in the Chinese literature
which our educated people called Việt bộ Mễ (Việt written with the“symbol rice”)
but the Chinese called it the Việt bộ Nguyệt (word Việt written with the “symbol moon”) and this symbol “moon”
was exactly the same tail, but not the “symbol rice” in the square. Until
Confucius rewrited the Kinh Thư, the word Việt written with the “symbol rice”
appeared in the literature. Before that period of time, we saw only the
original word Việt with the tail of the word Việt written with the “symbol rice”.
Why did the Chinese write it like that? No book explained it. We did do the
research on our own. We believed that this original and simplistic word Việt
seemed to mean possibly the axe… Such axes were digged up in Quốc Oai between Hà
Đông and Sơn Tây…”.
The purpose of the Chinese falsification of the pictogram Việt
with the “symbol rice” was to give the false impressions :
1-The Shang
Dynasty was able to invent the pictogram, so the future writing was of Chinese
invention. The reality was that the Chinese under the Shang Dynasty just
"borrowed" the inferior part of the pictogram Viet written with the “symbol rice” of the
Vietnamese script in pre-invasion of the Shang Dynasty era in order to lead the
people into error that the Chinese could also invent the writing system for
their own use.
2-The Chinese set
a name Việt for the Vietnamese people. The name Việt existed in the Việt Thường (2358 BC) longtimes before
the Chinese invasion of the land of Bách Việt in 1600 BC. The mythology of Mường
people called King Việt “Bua Yịt” or “Yịt Yàng” (Yàng means King or Leader in
the Austro-asiatic languague). The word "Yịt" was the ancient language of South Asia which was translated to ancient Chinese, then it was translated back from ancient Chinese to Han Viet language and became "Việt".
3-They wanted to
conceal the truth that they inherited the writing system of the conquered
people (the Việt bộ Mễ
and Việt
bộ Tẩu
did
exist well before the invasion of the Shang Dynasty and later found in the
Oracle Bone Scripts in 1899 in the region of Yangshao Culture).
4-They fooled Vietnamese historians
including Bình Nguyên Lộc to have the false notion that the pictogram Việt
being associated with the axe unearthed in Quốc Oai or Chiết Giang.
Bình Nguyên Lộc himself questioned “Why did the Chinese
write the pictogram Việt that way?”. The correct answer was “Because they did
not have any writing system, so they had to “borrow” the Vietnamese writing
system, specially the pictogram Việt with the “symbol rice” and “skillfully”
detach the tail of this pictogram in order to form a new pseudo-pictogram in the form
of an axe. They then imposed on the people the new pictogram and forced them to
call it “Việt”. This way seemed to be successful, so Chu Tuyên Vương (827 BC –
782 BC) ordered the high-ranking Mandarin
Trửu to change the tadpole-like characters of the Vietnamese people into the
Greater Seal Scripts in order to write the China’s history.
The Chinese always claimed that the writing history of China
can be found as early as the Shang Dynasty (c.1700 – 1046 BC), although as
proofs they had only ancient historical texts such as
Records
of the Grand Historian (c. 100 BC),
Bamboo
Annals (5
th century BC – 221 BC).
Oracle Bones with ancient Chinese writing from the Shang Dynasty
has been radiocarbon dated as early as 1500 BC. The oldest Chinese inscriptions
that are
indisbutably writing are the Oracle Bone Script identified
by scholars in 1899 at the village Anyang in Henan
province. The Records of the Grand Historian
was written by Sima Qian from 109 BC to 91 BC (Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia). The Bamboo Annals is a chronicle compiled in the State of Wei
during the Warring States Period (5
th cent. BC – 221 BC). The great
part of these bamboo slips had been destroyed by the grave robbers.
Sima Qian
and many other Chinese historians used
Việt
Tuyệt thư (770 BC – 480 BC) as historical source about the history of Bách
Việt and legendary stories of the ancient times. Sima Qian was born in 145 BC
or 135 BC – 86 BC). He should have been writing the Chinese history in tadpole-like
characters as recorded by the
Chinese
Scripts and Symbols article : “
A
major event in the history of China script is the standardization of writing by
the First Emperor of Qin who unified China in 221 BC. Before that time, each of
the many states in China had their own style and peculiarities which meant
that, although mutually comprehensible, the scripts have many deviations.”
This article demonstrated that Tuyệt Việt thư was authentic
about the universal usage of the Vietnamese writing, language and culture.
Until the time of Shi Hoangdi of Qin (221 BC – 207 BC), all states in China
still used the same “
mutually
comprehensible scripts”which was the tadpole-like characters.
Therefore, the Shang Dynasty did not have
its own writing system.
The same article wrote : “
The inscriptions on these bones tell us that by 1200 BC Chinese writing
was already a highly developed writing system which was used to record a
language fairly similar to classical Chinese. Such a complex and sophisticated
script certainly has a history but so far we found no trace of its
predecessors.”.
The last statement "...
script certainly has a history but so far we found no trace of its predecesssors" strongly suggested that the Oracle Bone Scripts were not invented in the Yangshao Culture area during 3.000 years BC. It re-enforced the conclusion of the scientific analysis of the Oracle Bone Scripts by Professor Vũ Thế Ngọc in the paragraph IV (Did The Chinese invent the Oracle Bone Scripts?) .
The history of the Shang Dynasty was written only many
centuries after it was destroyed in 1050 BC by the Chu Dynasty. It was the Chu
Dynasty who wrote the history of the Shang Dynasty! If the Shang Dynasty had a
writing system in 1300 BC, its history should have been written longtimes ago
(250 years) before it was destroyed in 1050 BC.
The Chinese claimed the Oracle Bone Scripts were the writing
of the Shang Dynasty. We are going to examine the details of the Oracle Bone
Scripts unearthed in 1899 in the region of Yangshao Culture.
IV- Did the Chinese invent the Oracle Bone Scripts? :
The answer is NO. Here are the historical and archeological reasons :
In 1899, Wang Yrong a
government official in Beijing fell sick. He was prescribed medicinal dragon bones. He noticed that an
old Chinese writing was inscribed on these bones. This unexpected uncovering of
the Chinese writing on medicinal dragon bones led to the discovery of the
Oracle Bone Scripts in 1899 in Anyang, the last capital of Shang Dynasty where
archeologists have found an enormous amount of carved bones. Therefore, Wang Yrong was the first Chinese who saw the Oracle Bone
writing.
The Oracle Bone Scripts dated back to 1300 BC. They were
unearthed in 1899 – that is – from the end of the Shang Dynasty to the Han
Dynasty. At that time, no Chinese knew there were Oracle Bone Scripts buried in the soil. Even King Chu Tuyên Vương (827
BC – 782 BC) did not know them either when he ordered the high-ranking Mandarin
Trửu to change the tadpole-like characters to the greater seal scripts to write
the history of China.
The Dictionary Việt-Hán-Nôm presented brievely the story of the
writing Việt-Nôm wrote : “The Greater Seal Scripts appeared in 826 BC – 827 BC and
was the invention of the high-ranking Mandarin Trửu under King Chu Tuyên Vương.”
However, the Chinese kept saying : “The
Greater Seal Scripts are the ancient scripts of the Chinese Calligraphy which originated
from the Oracle Bone Scripts of the Chu Dynasty (1050 BC – 256 BC) and
developed in the State of Shi Hoangdi of Qin (221 BC – 207 BC) in the Warring
States Period”.
This is a statement lacking historical and scientific background
because the Oracle Bone Scripts were not unearthed in 1050 BC until 1899, so no
Chinese in the Chu Dynasty, Shi Hoangdi of Qin and Han Dynasty ever knew them.
Therefore, it could not be said that the Greater Seal Scripts were originated
from the Oracle Bone Scripts in Chu Dynasty!! The Chinese consciously hid the
fact that King Chu Tuyên Vương (827 BC – 782 BC) had the high-ranking Mandarin
Trửu change the tadpole-like characters of the Vietnames people to the Geater
Seal Scripts to write the China’s history. Therefore, the Greater Seal Scripts had nothing to do with the Oracle Bone Scripts. They were created and used to write the China's history for 2,827 years before the Oracle Bone Scripts were unearthed in 1899.
Professor Vũ Thế Ngọc recognized, by analysis that the
Oracle Bone Scripts, "The total lack of pictograms" which are indispensible for
all types of writing of any people in the world at the very early beginning of
their invention. In Chinese writing, the Six Rules (Lục Thư) states that the
ideogram MUST depend on the pictograms to be formed. Prof. Vũ Thế Ngọc could not find any visible attempt to invent the Oracle Bone Scripts in 3.000 years in the Yangshao Culture area. He wrote : “However, from Yangshao to that period,
there was almost 3.000 years. But during 3.000 years, one could not observe any evidence that there were a
continuing evolution of the signs or material of the Yangshao leading to
the development of the latest writing at the end of the Shang Dynasty (1300 BC).
The interval of 3.000 years was sufficient to dispel the hypothesis that there were a
relationship between the two parties.”
This analysis
demonstrated that the Oracle Bone
Scripts were not invented during 3.000 years in the region of Yangshao
Culture. They could have been left there by another people who had
migrated through that area. Therefore, the Oracle Bone Scripts were not the
invention of the Chinese people.
In fact, international archeologists and some Chinese
archeologists like Liu Xigui did not accept the Chinese scripts which were related to
the Yangshao Culture. Liu Xigui wrote (2000 p.31) : “We do not have any basis for stating the
signs on the potteries, animal bones or tortoise constituted writing, nor is
there reason to conclude that they were ancestral to Shang Dynasty Chinese
characters.”.
Wilhem G. Solheim II at the University of Hawaii wrote that
the Hòa Bình Culture was the origin of the Yangshao Culture”.
The final conclusion
was that the Chinese did not invent the Oracle Bone Scripts nor the Six Rules
as they claimed. Who was the inventor of the Oracle Bones Scripts? As
demonstrated above, the Lạc Việt scripts inscribed on the piece of stone showed
the characters of the Hòa Bình and Đông Sơn people, we have to examine the
writing of the Hòa Bình people and the characters on the bronze objects of Đông
Sơn because the Oracle Bone Scripts were the final development of the Lạc Việt
writing system.
V- The Writing of The Hòa Bình People :
Before 1900's, when the Asian Civilization was discussed, all European archeologists knew only the China and India. They looked down on other countries in Asia.
Madelaine Colani was a French famous archeologist who have
digged many grottes in the North of Vietnam. She found many artifacts which
were different from those of other cultures in the world. She proposed the
Culture of Hòa Bình. The whole world accepted her proposition. In 1923, while
she was digging a grotte in the region of Hòa Bình Culture, she discovered near
the mountain Lam Gan two small pottery disks with the inscription of two "Chinese" words
"Sĩ" and "Thượng" on them. But the two small pottery disks dated back to 8.000 BC.
At that period of time (8000 BC), the Chinese did not have the writing system yet.
They did not have their presence in Asia yet. These two artifacts caused headache
to researchers because the Chinese writing was officially recognized in 1300
BC. When these two artifacts were unearthed, they did not have too much
attention because of being considered as decorative devices. But when they were
re-examined later, they were recognized as representing two words Sĩ and Thượng
on the Table of Shanghai Chinese Scripts. Therefore, these two characters
should be the writing of the Hòa Bình people. These two artifacts were the
definite witnesses of the Chinese taking over of the Vietnamese writing system
to make Chinese ones.
Thượng Sĩ
Figure 5 : Photograph of the two small pottery disks unearthed by Madelaine Colani in
1923 at the Hòa Bình Culture area in North Vietnam.
These two words
Sĩ and
Thượng supported the theory of
Professor David Keightley (Berkely 1983) that : “
The Chinese civilization did not come from the north of the river Wei as
falsely thought. It came from the South of the Yangtze River. The development
of the Vietnamese people and other neighbor people showed the origin of culture
and the way the earliest Chinese civilization was built up. Archaeology,
Anthropology and Languistics allowed to have the theory that a people in the
South of China at the new stone age
(Neolithic), who had an important role in the Cultural Center of Hòa Bình,
migrated in the fifth millennium BC through Szechwan province to the river Wei to
build the new stone age Chinese civilization (The Origin of the Chinese
Civilization, Berkely
1983).
This hypothesis made us strongly believe that the Hòa
Bình people had left their perfect
writing system in the Yangshao Culture area.
VI-- The Characters On The Bronze Objects Of Đông Sơn :
In 1979, when Professor Hà Văn Tấn did a research on the artifacts
of Đông Sơn unearthed by the Danemark archeologist O. Janse in Thanh Hóa
actually sitting at the museum Guimet, Paris, he saw a bronze tool which
archeologists used to call butterfly-shaped ploughshare special to the river Mã
region, which have two symbols on both sides of the hole for the handle (Fig. 3, upper line). The first symbol on the upper line was the
character Tài (talent) and the
second was the character Dĩ (usage).
Mộc
Figure 3 : Characters
on the bronze objects of Đông Sơn.
Upper line : Characcters on the butterfly-shaped
ploughshare at Thanh Hóa.
Lower line: Characters on
the bronze objects at river Mã, Thanh Hóa.
Professor Vũ Thế Ngọc has demonstrated how the Chinese
changed the tadpole-like pictograms of the Vietnamese invention into the Greater
Seal Scripts as shown below (Fig. 6)
:
Tadpole-like pictogram Chinese character
Mộc (Tree) Mộc (Tree)
Figure 6 : The tapole-like pictogram Mộc was changed to Chinese Mộc.
(From the book "Research on Chinese Characters and Chinese Vietnamese languages 1989" of
Professor Vũ Thế Ngọc, p.280, col.15).
In the tadpole-like pictogram
Mộc (tree)
,
the upper semicircle turning upward was changed to a strait line. The lower
semicircle turning downward was replaced by two strait line outward. The middle
strait line was kept unchanged. It was the Chinese pictogram
Mộc (tree)
modified by the Chinese from tadpole-like pictogram Việt.
Among the bronze objects in the Museum of History (Hanoi),
Professor Hà Văn Tấn, found a bronze “qua” (spear), an ancient weapon,
discovered in the river Mã, Thanh Hóa, of which the handle was inscribed five
symbols. Professor Hà Văn Tấn asserted that the characters on the cultural
ploughshare of Đông Sơn was certainly the writing of the ancient Vietnamese people.
The bronze spear was found both in the river Mã area in Vietnam and in the
South of Yangtze River area. He believed that this writing was that of the Lạc Việt people. In Hoàng Sa (Hồ Nam), a knife with the
handle decorated with a man was found in a
grave of a Sở people. It was the product of Đông Sơn. He concluded that
“The influence of Đông Sơn culture, which spread
to the State of Sở by the river Nguyên and Tương, was
clear”. Now it could say that There was
a writing system of the ancient Vietnamese at the time of Đông Sơn Civilization in the IV century BC,
before the invasion of the Han, who dominated the ancient Vietnamese for more
than one thousand years, and they were kicked out to the North in 898”.
The final conclusion
was that the Oracle Bone Scripts were not invented by the Chinese but by the Bách
Việt, who left their perfect scripts in the Yangshao Culture area when they
migrated through that area.
VII- The Re-discovery of the Tadpole-like Writing In Yunan,
China in 2010 :
In the process of taking over the tadpole-like writing of
the Vietnamese people, King Chu Tuyên Vương (827 BC – 782 BC) ordered the
high-ranking Mandarin Trửu to change the Vietnamese writing to the Greater Seal
Scripts (14VN) in order to write the China’s history. We have found the
evidence of this transformation in many small pagoda’s in Yunan, China in 2010
(Fig. 5) :
5a 5b 5c
Figure 5 : 5a = Tadpole-like pictogram "Budda"
5b = Tapole-like pictogram "Phật" changed to Chinese character "Phật".
5c = Actual Chinese character "Phật"
Chinese people from Beijing read 5a and 5b “Phỏ”. Chinese
from Guangdong province read 5a and 5b “Phật” exactly like the Vietnamese who read
them. The word 5b and 5c are identical except 5b is hand-written and 5c the
printed ones. Chinese people from Beijing, Guangdong and Yunan recognized these
words as ancient Chinese words.
The tadpole-like pictogram “Budda” consists of two vertical
strait lines tied together in the upper ends. One of the two vertical strait
lines was replaced by an oblique line over the remaining vertical strait line.
The rest of the pictogram was kept intact. This modification was seen in 28
pictograms among 1.000 model tadpole-like pictograms in the book “Research
on the Chinese Writing and Chinese Vietnamese Languages 1989” (Nghiên cứu
chữ Hán và tiếng Hán Việt 1989) of Professor Vũ Thế Ngọc. The order
of King Chu Tuyên Vương (827 BC – 782 BC) to change the tadpole-like writing to
the Greater Seal Scripts was exposed here lively in the transformation of the
tadpole-like pictogram “Budda” into the Greater Seal Script “Budda” .
Du Miên author of the book “Vietnam, the Source of Civilization in the Orient” wrote : “Yunan
was the land in which the legend said Mother Âu Cơ led 50 children to the Mountain”. Chinese history book recorded Điền Việt (a group
of Bách Việt) were living in Yunan.
Through the Historical
Breach of China, we can anticipate that the Vietnamese writing, culture and
language have been used throughout in ancient China. The evidence was :
1-All educated
people before, contemporary and after Confucius
knew the tadpole-like writing well.
2-All important
books such as Kinh Thư, part of Emperor Shun, Xia Dynasty, Shang Dynasty, Zhou
Dynasty with Tả Truyện, Luận Ngữ, Hiếu Kinh, etc… were written in tadpole-like writing.
3-Confucius went
with his disciples to many states such as Sở, Lỗ, Việt, Ngô, Tề… to spread his
thinking and asked to serve different Kings. If the people in these states did
not have the same writing, same culture and same language, how did Confucius
spread his ideas and to whom? How could
he serve different Kings at that time?
4-All educated people
of that time in all States of China knew very well his philosophy and admired
it. It was the evidence of the fact that these people had the same language,
culture and writing.
In fact, the Wikipedia encyclopedia had the article “Chinese Scripts and Symbols” : “A major event in the history of Chinese
scripts is the standardization of writing by the First Emperor of Qin who united
China in 221 BC. Before that time, each of the many states in China had their
own style and peculiarities which mean that, although mutually comprehensible,
the scripts had many deviations. The First Emperor introduced the Qin scripts as
the official writing".
This article confirmed that all states in China had the same
writing with some deviations peculiar to each state
. Consequently, Shi Hoangdi of Qin did not destroy any languages at
all. He just ordered the King’s First Minister Lý Tư to unify these words, how
to write them, explain and/or clarify the meaning of these deviations. He also
recommended to use Nhã Ngữ (Vietnamese language) to unify the national language
and writing of the whole China. This article demonstrated definitely that the
Vietnamese writing, culture and language were used universally throughout
ancient China. In another words, the wine bottle was Chinese. But the wine
inside the bottle was Vietnamese – that is – the writing, culture and language…were
Vietnamese.
The discovery of the Lạc Viêt writing this time consolidated
the same truth. The Society of Research on the Lạc Việt Culture advanced their
determination that the discovery of their ancient scripts would re-write the
China’s history of writing because the Lạc Việt culture was the most
influencial ones in the ancient China.
In summary, in the process of taking over the Vietnamese
writing system, Chinese started steps by steps the longlasting process for
many thousand years as follow :
1-The Chinese under
the Shang Dynasty began to falcify the tadpole-like pictogram Việt written with
the “symbol rice” to produce pseudo-pictogram in the form of an axe. They
imposed it then on the people to force them to call it Việt. The purpose was
they wanted to show that they too could
invent pictograms on their own.
2-The falcification of the pictogram Việt was probably successful, so King Chu Tuyên Vương
(827 BC – 782 BC) ordered the high-ranking Mandarin Trửu to change the tadpole-like
writing into the Greater Seal Scripts for the writing of China’s
history.
3-Confucius, who acknowledged that
he did not invent any thing new but repeated the sages'thoughts ("I am a transmitter, not an originator", Jonathan Fenby, China's Imperial Dynasties 1600 BC - AD 1912
),
started to rewrite the most influential Vietnamese books such as King Thư, Tả Truyện, Luận Ngữ, Hiếu Kinh, etc…in order to impose on the
people the ideas that it was Chinese philosophy not Vietnamese ones. These books existed before Confucius. They were written by the Bách Việt Sages for their children. Confucius just repeated these ideas. The Chinese authorities indoctrinated the people that it was the philosophy of Confucius. Was it an usurpation by the Chinese?
4- The Zhou Dynasty
changed Kinh Dịch into Zhou Dịch.
5-Shi Hoangdi of
Qin ordered to burn all books written in tadpole-like writing and buried alive
any one who wanted to save these books. Shi Hoangdi knew that the rescue of old books was not a crime which deserved the penalty of burying alive people who did it. But Shi Hoangdi did it for a secrete and grave reason.
6-All Chinese
historians asserted that the ancestors of the people Tráng in China, who were
the Lạc Việt, did not have the writing system.
7-Ma Yuan was sent
to the South to put down the uprising of Two Siters Trưng. He took with him the Việt Legal Code (“Bộ Việt Luật”)
written in square pictograms after
he succeeded to quell the rebellion of the Two Sisters Trưng. He sent 300
Vietnamese noble families to the South area of the Yangtze River for
re-education. He stayed behind to organize the extermination of the Vietnamese
writing system. Later, the Vietnamese people had to learn again these square pictograms from the beginning.
This time these square pictograms were called Chinese writing.
VII- Conclusion:
The discovery of the
Lạc Việt writing system in December 2011 was comparable to a very strong
earthquate to the cultural background of China, which shook the false concept
which the Chinese successfully built up for more than 3.000 years : The
Chinese system of writing for 3.000 years was in fact that of the Vietnamese
ones dating back to almost 15.000 BC. The Chinese usurped the Vietnamese writing system by their invasion
and domination of the Vietnamese people for more than 1,000 years.
It was like a tsunami which washed away into the ocean the
dark smoke enveloping the true Vietnamese culture. The Lạc Việt writing
demonstrated that Việt Tuyệt thư was
correct as described by Đổ Thành, a Chinese from Chaozhou, in his article “Bách
Việt History : Layers of Dark Smoke on the History”(Bách Việt Sử: Những
Lớp Bụi Mù Trên Lịch Sử). He summarized : “Too many proofs and too much evidence that from Han Dynasty, Qin Shi Hoangdi, Spring and Autumn Period, Warring States Period, Zhou Dynasty, Shang Dynasty, Xia Dynasty, Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors Period in the past…, language
and culture were... Vietnamese”.
The Vietnamese writing is the oldest writing system in the
world dating back to almost 15.000 BC. The second oldest writing was the
Sumerian scripts (Babylon in Iraque or Ancient Mesopotamia) dating back to 3100
BC. The Egyptian scripts followed soon after the Sumerian ones.
The Chinese writing (827 BC) has the origin in the
Vietnamese writing (12.000 BC – 15.000 BC).
We are now expecting the Academy of Science in Beijing to
recognize the truth and make a fair statement “Chinese
writing” or “Lạc Việt writing”. We will be humble to honor what ever the Academy of Science of China decides to
say with the philosophy of “History is History” everywhere in the world. In Europe, the Latins (later the Romans) usurped the Alphabet A, B, C... of the conquered Etruscan people to transcribe the Roman language.
