| From sometime in the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.) and
over a long period of time in ancient China, plain silk of various
descriptions joined bamboo and wood slips as the material for writing
or painting on. Silk had advantages over the slips in that it was
much lighter and could be cut in desired shapes and sizes and folded,
the better to be kept and carried. But owing to its much greater
cost, silk was never so popularly used as the slips.
The most valuable find of ancient silk writings was made in 1973
from an ancient tomb known as the No.3 Han Tomb at Mawangdui, Changsha,
Hunan Province. It is in the form of 30-odd pieces of silk, bearing
more than 120,000 characters. They consist largely of ancient works
that had long been lost. For instance, Wuxingzhan describes the
orbits of five planets (Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars and Saturn)
and gives the cycles of their alignment, all with a precision far
more remarkable than similar works which appeared later. Also found
were three maps drawn on silk, showing the topography, the stationing
of troops and the cities and towns of certain regions of China.
They are the earliest maps in China, and in the world as well, that
have been made on the basis of field surveys. Contrary to their
modern counterparts, they show south on top and north at the bottom.
The topographic map is at a scale of 1 : 180,000, and the troop
distribution map at about 1:80,000/100,000. Their historical value
may be easily imagined when one remembers that they are at least
2,100 years old.
Silk was considered in old China an exquisite material for writing
on; some were pre-marked with lines in vermilion. During the Tang
Dynasty (618-907), it was the fashion to weave the lines into plain
white silk to be used exclusively for writing.
Many artists of today have carried on the ancient practice of painting
and writing on silk.
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