Script Style Research Articles

The Art of Chinese Calligraphy: Educational Protection and Literacy Study of Cultural Heritage

Chinese traditional calligraphy is an important part of Chinese culture, with rich cultural value, historical value, artistic value and educational value. Traditional calligraphy art has shown new characteristics in the current era. This research objectives are: 1) to study the historical development and cultural value of Chinese calligraphy; 2) to analyze the current situation and issues of Chinese calligraphy; 3) to identify the way in which inheritance and literacy of Chinese calligraphy art can be protected. This research adopts qualitative methods, collecting field data through literature document, surveys, interviews, observations, and group discussions. Our results summarize the multiple eras through which the historical development of Chinese calligraphy took place. Our study focused on the content and artistic styles of Chinese calligraphy, categorizing its development into four periods; namely (i) Primitive Society to 2070 BC, which is characterized by pictographic writing and primitive symbols. (ii) 2070 BC to 221 BC, the period of formation of written characters and invention of the writing brush and ink, (iii) 221 BC to 589 AD, characterized by the standardization of Xiaozhuan and the invention of papermaking, and (iv) 589 AD to 1905 AD characterized by development and refinement of the five script styles influenced by the imperial examination system. Our results also depict the current situation and problems of Chinese calligraphy and the problems it faces. Finally, the results also show the multiple ways in which Chinese calligraphy could be preserved. As an excellent cultural heritage, traditional Chinese calligraphy art will shine with new light in modern society.

The Style and Influence of Su Shi's Regular Script

The Style and Influence of Su Shi's Regular Script

A Survey on Text-Line Segmentation in Arab Historical Manuscripts

The segmentation process entails dividing or decomposing the entire document image into segments. This operation serves as a fundamental step in developing any writing or optical character recognition system. However, numerous existing segmentation schemes encounter challenges when dealing with specific script styles, like ancient or historical Arabic writing found in ancient manuscripts, which possesses unique characteristics. These characteristics include inclined text lines, overlapping letters, diacritic marks, decorative elements, variable letter forms, and ligatures (combinations of two or more letters merged to form a single connected shape). Thus, in this paper, we present a thorough survey of the field. The survey is composed of two parts. The first section provides a concise overview of historical Arabic documents. The second, which serves as the primary section, focuses on the crucial step of handwritten document recognition, specifically segmentation. A detailed and systematic overview of various segmentation approaches at different levels for extracting handwritten Arabic text-lines is outlined, followed by a literature study analyzing proposed works in this area.

An Early Arabic Translation of Exodus 15 from a Palestinian Melkite Psalter in the Cairo Genizah

This article presents an Arabic translation of Exodus 15 from the Cairo Genizah, preserved in two fragments of a Christian lectionary (MSS CUL T-S NS 305.198 and T-S NS 305.210). The style of the lectionary's Arabic script suggests that it was copied by a well-trained scribe in the late 9th or early 10th century. Such a date makes it the oldest Christian Arabic Bible translation yet found in the Genizah. Linguistic analysis further indicates that its translator had access to the Peshitta and either the Syro-Hexapla or Septuagint of Exodus 15 during their work. Most likely, this translator was a ninth-century Melkite Christian who spoke both Syriac and Arabic.

Script-style degrees

Abstract Previous work has shown that letters presented in special fonts with a high degree of script style have a poor recognition rate. We investigated whether there is a breaking point where this deficit sets in. In an experimental paradigm using a three-letter string partial report, 32 participants were presented with test stimuli of four new fonts with gradually increasing script style. The results of our investigation showed that each level of increasing script style resulted in significantly worse recognition. These findings demonstrate that for maximum letter recognition, the font style should be based on simple and familiar letter skeletons.

DECIPHERING THE SCRIPTS AND LANGUAGES OF AFRIGHID KHOREZM A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW.

This review explores the evolution and scholarly investigation of Khorezmian scripts and languages during the Afrighid era (4th-10th centuries), focusing on their Aramaic origins and transformations post-Arab conquest. Significant findings from the Khorezm Archaeological-Ethnographic Expedition have highlighted the minimal alterations in script style from the 3rd to the 8th century, despite cultural and religious shifts from Zoroastrianism to Islam. The research integrates contributions from both Soviet and international scholars, revealing that while the script's study began earnestly in the mid-20th century, many inscriptions from pivotal archaeological sites remain unpublished. Challenges in compiling and analyzing these texts are discussed, emphasizing the need for a comprehensive platform to publish and synthesize all findings. The paper also addresses the broader implications of script changes on the understanding of Khorezm’s cultural independence and historical linguistics, suggesting that further research could refine our knowledge of regional interactions and script evolution in ancient Central Asia.

부여 정림사지 오층석탑 관련 기록을 통해 본 조선 문인들의 인식

This paper examines the perception of the Joseon literati through the records about the five-story stone pagoda at the Jeongnim-sa temple site. We first speculate the process of how the inscriptions were made on the stone pagoda. After pacifying Baekje, General Sojeongbang had to return to Tang and report to the emperor before proceeding to conquer Goguryeo. Therefore, there was only about a month of time available for him to compose his merit inscriptions and carve it onto a stone monument. As there was no time to prepare a stone monument, we presume the inscriptions were made on the stone pagoda as an alternative. In general, the Joseon literati called the five-story stone pagoda at the Jeongnim-sa temple site as the Pyeongjae-pagoda. After examining the names such as ‘Pyeong-jae-top(平濟塔)’, ‘Pyeong-baek-je-top(平百濟塔)’, ‘Pyeong-baek-jae-top-myeong(平百濟塔銘)’, ‘So-jeong-bang-bi(蘇定方碑)’, ‘Shin-la-pyeong-jae-top-bi(新羅平濟塔碑)’, ‘So-jeong-bang-peyong-jae-top (蘇定方平濟㙮)’, ‘Dae-tang-pyeong-jae-top(大唐平百濟塔)’, we show that the names are either abbreviations of “Dae-dang-pyeong-baek-je-guk-bi- myeong(大唐平百濟國碑銘)” or those regarding the person responsible for making the inscriptions. In addition, upon observing “Dae-dang-pyeong- baek-je-guk-bi-myeong(大唐平百濟國碑銘)”, the Joseon literatistood on the side of the people of Baekje and criticized the Tang dynasty for conquering the small nation of Baekje. Furthermore, they perceived the actions of General Sojeongbang who made the merit monument as a cruel tyranny. Finally, we show that the perspective on “Dae-dang-pyeong-baek-je- guk-bi-myeong(大唐平百濟國碑銘)” changed during the late Joseon dynasty due to the influence of the Qing historiography and epigraphy. We analyze the literary characteristics of the inscriptions and evaluate the script style and the level of the caligraphy. Through this, we address the issues related to the author while showing that it was considered one of the finest epigraphic materials in Korea.

Analysis of the Evolution of Calligraphy Creation Style Combined with Numerical Analysis Methods

Abstract The combination of computer technology and calligraphy art is better applied to people’s daily lives while promoting the popularization and development of calligraphy art. In this paper, the mechanical model of the brush tip is constructed on the basis of the spring-vibrator model according to the relationship between the force and the deformation of the brush tip in the real calligraphy creation and drawing. The projection plane is constructed by the method of mapping, and the two-dimensional brush strokes generated on the projection plane are mapped onto the surface of the three-dimensional model in real-time, and the method of minimally enclosing the sphere of the brush tip is used to solve the normal vector direction of the plane. Finally, the orthographic projection of the contact area between the brush and the plane is taken as the brush stroke, and the real brush stroke is simplified to be fitted by two symmetric B-spline curves. The results show that the maximum value of the relevant parameter of the sine equation in the four simulations of the regular script style is 1.5075, which has the best-fitting effect. After 300 iterations of calligraphic creation style evolution, the style recognizability reaches 24.8. The method feeds back the process of recreating calligraphic style and increases the interactivity of calligraphic creation.

A Corpus of Illuminated Qurʾāns from Coastal East Africa

Abstract This article examines a little-known corpus of illuminated Qurʾān manuscripts that were produced between ca. 1750–ca. 1850 in the Swahili city-states of Pate, Siyu, and Faza on Pate Island in the Lamu archipelago (Kenya). Now dispersed in collections in Kenya, Tanzania, Oman, the UK, and the USA, the manuscripts have many distinctive features: decorative frontispieces, sūra titles, basmalas, and division and prostration markers; locally developed Arabic script styles; colophons containing names of copyists and completion dates; endowment dedications; northern Italian-made paper; and, blind-stamped, leather covers. The list of known manuscripts presented in the appendix is aimed at encouraging the identification, digitization, and study of other manuscripts in the corpus. The study of their content, materiality, and contexts of production can advance scholarship on the histories of Islamic manuscript production in coastal East Africa and provide comparative material for manuscript studies in other regions of Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean.

A History of a Traveling Qurʾān Manuscript in Inhambane, Mozambique

Abstract The present article traces the history of a Qurʾān manuscript that, according to oral testimony, travelled from Oman to Inhambane via Zanzibar between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The manuscript is kept at the Jam’a Mosque in the city of Inhambane, southern Mozambique. Inhambane fell under the sphere of influence of the ancient sheikhdom of Sofala, founded by Swahili Arab traders as part of the Zimbabwe gold trade in the eighth century ad and destroyed by the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century. The presence of this manuscript in Inhambane contradicts the general idea of a disconnect between the southern Mozambique region and Swahili trading networks as a result of the Portuguese presence in Sofala, Tete, Quelimane, and Mozambique Island. The properties of the manuscript, its materials (ink and paper), and its writing style (its script style and punctuation marks) are adduced, on the one hand, to argue that it was not produced in the territory of Mozambique; on the other hand, this highlights its connection with Qurʾān manuscripts produced in other parts of the western Indian Ocean region.

Style and Rebus in an Emergent Script from Bolivia: The Koati Variant of Andean Pictographic Writing

Abstract Andean pictographic writing, once considered the creation of foreign missionaries, is now recognized as a series of locally developed scripts that emerged after contact with alphabetic writing. However, the role of stylistic variation within the Andean pictographic scripts is little understood, nor has the rebus-based glottography of the system’s phonetic signs been fully studied. This article examines the Koati variant of Andean pictographic script from Bolivia’s Island of the Moon, based in part on a newly found pictographic manuscript preserved on animal hides in Harvard University’s Peabody Museum. It analyzes how script styles in the Titicaca area correspond to regional groups and explores the nature of rebus signs in the Koati variant, identifying the principles underlying successful homonymic equivalences. Many of the characters in Andean pictographic writing appear to draw from a repository of Indigenous visual signs that predate the Spanish invasion; research into the emergent pictorial scripts of Peru and Bolivia may provide insights into the meaning of visual signs in other forms of Andean inscription, such as ceramics and khipus.

New Change and Causes in Lesser Seal Script in the Later Years of Wu Changshuo

This paper compares Wu Changshuo's early and mid-period calligraphic works by analyzing his subtle way of using brushstrokes, taking his lesser seal script work The Record of Repairing Xu Tang in Zhenze made at the age of sixty-six as an example. By analyzing Wu Changshuo's late year lesser seal script, this paper describes features and changes in different periods. It also focuses on the late year lesser seal script works by sorting and summarizing, and analyzes new changes of work characteristics in his later years. The case study of Wu Changshuo's The Record of Repairing Xu Tang in Zhenze provides a new perspective and undoubtedly has an important theoretical guidance and practical enlightenment for the development of contemporary lesser seal script styles.

Japonica w archiwaliach po Bronisławie Piłsudskim w Bibliotece Naukowej PAU i PAN w Krakowie (10). Motonaga Murao i jego kartka pocztowa

Japonica in the archives left after Bronisław Piłsudski in the Scientific Library of the PAAS and the PAS in Cracow (10). Motonaga Murao and his Postcard Message The tenth installment of the series introducing Japanese documents preserved with Bronisław Piłsudski’s archives in the Scientific Library of the PAAS and the PAS in Cracow focuses on a postcard message written in refined cursive script style labeled草書体 sōshotai (not necessarily correctly translated as ‘grass script’) quite difficult to decipher. When deciphered, the message seemed easy to translate but a reconstruction of possible sequence of events proved necessary. The author of the message and the calligraphy was Motonaga Murao, a high-ranking state servant, formerly working in the Hokkaido Development (~ Colonization) Agency (~Commission) and Hokkaido historian, educator, and author of several fundamental publications on the island and its development, works on the Ainu included. The message itself is doubtlessly a response to Piłsudski’s apparent request to meet – again doubtlessly – to exchange the knowledge and experience concerning the people of interest to both: the Ainu. The installment provides also information on Murao and his accomplishments.

Research on the Style of Duan Inkstone Inscription in Tang Dynasty

Under the background of the Tang Dynasty, regular script has developed into the most coordinated and stable calligraphy style through three periods of transition. This most stable regular script style is suitable for the inscriptions of stone tablets and Duan inkstone in the Tang Dynasty. During this transition, the inheritance and breakthrough in the early Tang Dynasty gave rise to the standardized embryonic form of regular script in the Tang Dynasty. Entering the middle of the Tang Dynasty, regular script was further innovated and developed, strengthening stability. It was not until the late Tang Dynasty was innovated and perfected, and the essence of the early stage was absorbed. During the transition period of regular script in the entire Tang Dynasty, on the basis of inheritance, there was a breakthrough and development. A stable development law was formed with changes in stability and changes in stability.

Digital Hebrew Paleography: Script Types and Modes.

Paleography is the study of ancient and medieval handwriting. It is essential for understanding, authenticating, and dating historical texts. Across many archives and libraries, many handwritten manuscripts are yet to be classified. Human experts can process a limited number of manuscripts; therefore, there is a need for an automatic tool for script type classification. In this study, we utilize a deep-learning methodology to classify medieval Hebrew manuscripts into 14 classes based on their script style and mode. Hebrew paleography recognizes six regional styles and three graphical modes of scripts. We experiment with several input image representations and network architectures to determine the appropriate ones and explore several approaches for script classification. We obtained the highest accuracy using hierarchical classification approach. At the first level, the regional style of the script is classified. Then, the patch is passed to the corresponding model at the second level to determine the graphical mode. In addition, we explore the use of soft labels to define a value we call squareness value that indicates the squareness/cursiveness of the script. We show how the graphical mode labels can be redefined using the squareness value. This redefinition increases the classification accuracy significantly. Finally, we show that the automatic classification is on-par with a human expert paleographer.

SEJARAH PRAKTIK PENGGUNAAN MANTRA DALAM MASYARAKAT KERINCI BERDASARKAN NASKAH TAMBO DAN KITAB AZIMAT KERINCI

Incung script is the original Kerinci script written on horns, animal skin, bark, Daluang leaves, and paper. This article aims to identify the style of script writing and the use of mantras in Kerinci community such as for treatment, immunity, defense, and other function based on Kerinci’s Tambo script and Azimat manuscript. This paper uses historical research methods with philological and textological approaches. The result of this study indicates that the Kerinci’s people used it before the arrival of Islam. It continued after the arrival of Islam. It can be seen from the presence of Islamic words such as Muhammad, Allah, and so on. In addition, the use of mantras in Kerinci’s community is quite varied, including as a strategy in defending Ulayat lands or fighting with Duwak (mysticism spell), Cuco (ancestral spirit summoning spell) and so on. Mantra and it funtion have been written in manuscripts by Kerinci’s community.

The Impact of Chinese Seals on the Structure, Design, and Usage of the Īl-Khānids Seals and Coins

Il-Khanid seals and coins are a type of seal featuring figurative patterns typically characterized by the Rectangular style of Kufic script, the absence of figures, extensive use of calligraphy, geometric, and abstract patterns. Although it is based on the Persian seal-carving tradition, the Īl-Khānids seals and coins exhibit various elements from the Chinese seals (印章), and also similar in their style to the Mongolian writing systems. While the Silk Road, the central path for trade and economic purposes, brought together China and Persia, the two nations had strong influences regarding culture, tradition, and religion, and Persian art has applied many Chinese artistic elements, particularly in the art of seal making. Indeed, the historical evidence suggests that the Mongolian Empire employed the Chinese seals (印章) throughout their territory, stretching from China to Persia.
 The intercultural influences through the Silk Road seem to be well-rooted in Central Asia, and for the first time, Chinese culture is seen abundantly in the Īl-Khānids seal history, as well as the Rectangular style of Kufic script on the seals and coins, influenced by the Uighur script. This paper uses an interdisciplinary approach to analyse the Chinese and the Īl-Khānids seals and coins to survey transmission of the Chinese tradition through Silk Road cultural exchanges. The results show that there exists a strong possibility that the manner in which the writing of Arabic characters in the Rectangular Kufic writing system was inserted at the top to the bottom unexpectedly followed the style of Mongolian words.

Photometric Ligature Extraction Technique for Urdu Optical Character Recognition

Urdu Optical Character Recognition (OCR) based on character level recognition (analytical approach) is less popular as compared to ligature level recognition (holistic approach) due to its added complexity, characters and strokes overlapping. This paper presents a holistic approach Urdu ligature extraction technique. The proposed Photometric Ligature Extraction (PLE) technique is independent of font size and column layout and is capable to handle non-overlapping and all inter and intra overlapping ligatures. It uses a customized photometric filter along with the application of X-shearing and padding with connected component analysis, to extract complete ligatures instead of extracting primary and secondary ligatures separately. A total of ~ 2,67,800 ligatures were extracted from scanned Urdu Nastaliq printed text images with an accuracy of 99.4%. Thus, the proposed framework outperforms the existing Urdu Nastaliq text extraction and segmentation algorithms. The proposed PLE framework can also be applied to other languages using the Nastaliq script style, languages such as Arabic, Persian, Pashto, and Sindhi.

On the Revival of Seal Script in Qing Dynasty

Seal script was formed in the Shang and Zhou dynasties. After the Qin Dynasty unified the six states, it was collectively known as "Xiaozhuan", which was a standardized common character at that time. Because of the complexity of writing and the need for deep ancient writing skills, the writing of later generations is time-consuming and laborious, so it is constantly limited in the development of later generations. With the rise of official script, regular script and running script, they gradually disappeared in the field of vision of the masses and had little influence. It was not until the late Ming and early Qing dynasties that the rise of Stele Study and Archaeology and the flourishing trend of restoring the ancients that the ancient style of seal script came into our view again. This paper will start from the background of the times and related calligraphers to explore the revival of seal script in Qing Dynasty.

戰國時期秦系文字의 異化現象에 대한 考察

The dissimulation of Qin Characters has been the most complicated in its changing process in structure, among which a number of dissimulation characters were adopted through the policy of Qin Dynasty of Unification, the one that was adopted by the later characters. It can be said that the dissimulated Qin Characters has turned out to be the basis of the structure of the following ones, by the factor that the elimination of those that were not willing to have cooperation with Qin, the remains of the six states was rarely seen, therefore, when in analysis of the situation of dissimulation of Qin characters, other branches of Characters of dissimulation of Qin Character scripts must be referred to, so as to get a more clear understanding of the process as well as the development of the dissimulated Characters and to explore the possibility of its dissimulation, through which numerous significant clues can be obtained. There are sort of distinctions among Qin Characters: dissimulation, simplification, multiplication, the simplifications and the multiplications just belong to individual case, whereas, the dissimulation being just that one character has multiple dissimulation, and in addition, there are a number of unique scripts, therefore, in the same writing there appeared several different unique styles of scripts and this occurred more frequently in the old style of Qin bamboo scripts, especially this phenomenon occurred more in Shuihudi Qin bamboo scripts, and due to its great number as well as the great number of people writing it, that's why in the same writing with the coming out of the dissimulation.