Shinso Senjimon (Thousand Character Classic in Regular and Cursive Script)

A Tang-Period Calligraphy, National Treasure since 1953

Shinso Senjimon (Thousand Character Classic in Regular and Cursive Script) (真草千字文) is a Chinese work of calligraphy in Kyoto Prefecture, designated a National Treasure in 1953, on 14 November. The quantity is one album, the category calligraphy and books, and the designation number 00180.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives the country as China and the period as Tang, and leaves the maker field blank. The year fields are blank as well, and the commentary runs to a single line: a work of the Tang period.

The field for the Important Cultural Property designation is also blank, with only the National Treasure date recorded. Most National Treasures pass through Important Cultural Property status first; this one carries no such record.

The Maker Is Not Recorded

The work is often attributed to Zhiyong, a monk of the Sui dynasty.

Zhiyong is said to have been a descendant of Wang Xizhi in the seventh generation, and to have written eight hundred copies of the Thousand Character Classic in the two scripts. The Kyoto National Museum records that tradition. The Agency, however, leaves the maker field blank and gives the period as Tang.

Zhiyong belongs to the Sui dynasty of the sixth century, and Tang followed Sui. If the maker were Zhiyong the period would be Sui; the Agency's record reads Tang. That answers to the view that this album is a Tang-period copy.

Descriptions asserting that it is Zhiyong's own hand and unique appear elsewhere, but the official record does not identify the maker. This article follows the Agency and records only that the attribution to Zhiyong exists.

The Thousand Character Classic

The Thousand Character Classic is a poem in lines of four characters, 250 lines in all. The Kyoto National Museum records that it was long used as a model for learning to read and to write.

All thousand characters differ from one another. Setting out a thousand characters without repeating one makes the text a means of learning them.

Regular and cursive are the two scripts of the title. Regular script sets each character out separately and evenly; cursive runs the strokes together. The same thousand characters are written twice, once in each script, side by side.

Showing one character in two hands makes the work a model for practice, with the correspondence between the scripts visible at a glance.

A Rubbing Is a Different Object

The Kyoto National Museum holds a Song-dynasty rubbing of Zhiyong's Thousand Character Classic in the two scripts. That is a different object from this one.

The museum records that the rubbing belongs to the Guanzhong line, cut at Chang'an in 1109 from an original held by the Cui family there. Its period is given as Sui, the sixth century, its technique as rubbing, and its size as 23.9 centimetres by 13.0 centimetres; it was presented by Ueno Seiichi.

A rubbing is taken on paper from characters cut into stone, and is a different kind of document from writing made with a brush. What is designated a National Treasure is the single album in Kyoto Prefecture, not the museum's rubbing.

Searching for this title can bring up the record of the rubbing. Tell them apart by category, calligraphy or rubbing, and by where they are held.

Seeing It

The Agency records the owner as a private individual and leaves both the location field and the holding institution field blank. The present place of keeping cannot be read from the official record; the prefecture given is Kyoto.

A National Treasure in private hands is not necessarily shown on any regular footing. Seeing it means waiting for a loan to an exhibition.

Calligraphy is vulnerable to light and humidity, and display periods are usually short. Check the notice of any showing before travelling.

The Song rubbing at the Kyoto National Museum is comparable material. Where the original cannot be seen, the forms of the characters can still be studied from the rubbing.