There is an east-west Shigu Road in the center of Nanjing, which connects Xinjiekou in the east and Hanzhong Gate in the west. Although the road is not wide, it involves a legend in Chinese studies. If you want to know the origin of the name Shigu Road, you should trace it back to Shi Guwen.

Shi Guwen is the earliest stone inscription in China, known as the "ancestor of stone carving" in the world. Because the characters are carved on ten drum-shaped stones, it is called "Shi Guwen". Shi Guwen is carved on granite, which is quite different from the bronze inscription and has obvious movement. Shi Guwen is more standardized than inscriptions on bronze, but it still retains the characteristics of inscriptions on bronze to some extent. It is a transitional style from inscriptions on bronze to Xiao Zhuan. Legend has it that before Shi Guwen, Taishi Chuan of Zhou Xuanwang had transformed and sorted out the inscriptions on bronze, and wrote 15 pieces of Da Zhuan, so Da Zhuan was also called "Shu Wen". Shi Guwen is one of the well-preserved calligraphic traces of Da Zhuan, which was handed down to later generations.

Shi Guwen, also known as Lietuan or Yongyi Stone Carving, is the earliest existing stone carving writing in China. There is no specific date, and Wei Yingwu and Han Yu's "Shigu Song" in the Tang Dynasty are considered to be carved stones in the Zhou Xuanwang period. Although Ouyang Xiu, a Song Dynasty poet, has three doubts about the poem "The Postscript of the Stone Drum", it is still believed that it was written by Shi Chuan in Zhou Xuanwang's time. Zheng Qiao, a Song Dynasty poet, thought that Shigu belonged to the pre-Qin period and was written after King Huiwen and before the Emperor. Both Luo Zhenyu's Textual Research on Shi Guwen and Ma Xulun's Notes on Shi Guwen are regarded as the things of Qin Wengong, which are not different from Wei and Han's statements, only 17 years apart. According to Guo Moruo's textual research, Shigu was written in Qin Xianggong for eight years, which is closer to Xuanwang. The difference is that it was written by Shi Shu or Qin Chen when he proclaimed the king.

Stone Drum was unearthed in Sanchouyuan, Tianxing (now Sanchouyuan, Baoji City, Shaanxi Province) in the early Tang Dynasty, and was later moved to Fengxiang Confucius Temple. During the war of the Five Dynasties, the stone drums were scattered among the people. After many twists and turns in the Song Dynasty, they were finally collected and placed in Yu Fengxiang University. Song Huizong has a fetish for epigraphy, especially the Stone Drum. In the second year of Daguan (A.D. 1 108), he moved it to the National Studies Institute in Beijing and embedded it with golden characters. Later, due to the Song and Jin Wars, Shigu was relocated to Lin 'an (now Hangzhou). After Jin Bing entered Bianjing, he saw Shigu and thought it was a "strange thing" and shipped it back to Yanjing (now Beijing). Since then, Shigu has experienced hundreds of years of ups and downs. When War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression broke out, in order to prevent the national treasure from being plundered by the Japanese invaders, Ma Heng, then president of the Palace Museum, moved the stone drum to the south of the Yangtze River and shipped it back to Beijing after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War./kloc-0 was exhibited in the Forbidden City in Beijing in 1956.

There are ten stone drums * * *, which are two feet high and more than one foot in diameter. The image of the drum is thin on the top and thick on the bottom and slightly round on the top (it is actually a cymbal). Because of the many words about fishing and hunting in the inscription, it is also called Hunting. Four-character poems divided into ten pieces in a group. At present, there are many indelible words, and there is no word left in the ninth drum. His book, written by Shi Shu, is magnificent, generous, lively and unrestrained, vigorous in temperament, combining rigidity with softness, simple and elegant. Horizontal and vertical, rigorous and neat, make good use of the center, the stroke thickness is basically the same, some structures are symmetrical and upright, and some words are uneven level, which is close to Xiao Zhuan without the formality of Xiao Zhuan. In terms of composition and layout, although the characters are independent, they also pay attention to the relationship between the top, bottom, left and right, and their strong brushwork is extremely prominent in stone carvings, which is unique in ancient Chinese calligraphy. Kang Youwei called it "like a golden mound, a cloud of grass and grass, leaving me alone, with its own unique talents." Its script is written in the transitional period from Da Zhuan to Xiao Zhuan. Learning Shi Guwen can catch up with Da Zhuan and learn Xiao Zhuan, which is foolproof. Those who learn seal script in later generations are regarded as authentic, and all of them are familiar with it. Yang Yisun, Wu Dacheng, Wu Changshuo and Wang Fuan all benefited from this.

Shi Guwen's rubbings existed in the Tang Dynasty, but they have not been handed down. Song Dynasty rubbings of stone drums collected by Song Anguo were sold by Qin Wenjin in the Republic of China to the Kawai family in Tokyo, Japan. In addition, there are three kinds of early rubbings circulated in the society: Pioneer, Zhongquan and Houli, among which Tianyi Pavilion has 422 characters of the northern song dynasty. However, the original rubbings have been lost, and now we can only see the photos of these three rubbings collected by Guo Moruo in Japan in the 1930s. The Song rubbings "Pioneer" collected by Anguo are photocopied by the old Commercial Press and Cultural Relics Publishing House, and collected in the book "Shi Guwen Studies" written by Guo Moruo. Shanghai Yiyuan Zhenshang Society has a photocopy of Zhongquan. There is a photocopy of "Aftereffect" in the "Series of Famous Books" published by Zhonghua Book Company and Japan Erxuan Society. The third issue of Calligraphy 1984 by Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Publishing House also published a photocopy of Shi Guwen's Song Tuo.

Stone Drum is the first antiquity in China, and it is also the first rule of calligraphers. It has high cultural and historical value and art collection value. Shi Guwen is regarded as an important model of learning seal script by calligraphers of past dynasties, so he is known as "the first rule of calligraphers". Shi Guwen's influence on the calligraphy circle was the most prosperous in Qing Dynasty, such as the famous seal writers Yang Yisun and Wu Changshuo, who formed their own style thanks to Shi Guwen.

There are many cities in China named Shigu Road, including Beijing, Xiamen and Luoyang. When we see Shigu Road, we should think of the vicissitudes that Shigu, as a national treasure, has experienced. Zhong Hanxun