A renowned Sinologist who has taught at major universities across the globe, Rao Zongyi is a Chinese literatus par excellence. In addition to his scholarly achievements, which are many, Rao excels at playing the qin, painting, writing calligraphy, and composing poems. As his calligraphy is often inspired by his deep learning, it is often referred to as “scholar-writing.” This couplet is one such example.

Rao has systematically studied all of the calligraphy masterpieces of the past and is intimately familiar with ancient scripts. For Rao, understanding their meaning goes hand in hand with grasping their form, and he rigorously practices writing ancient scripts.

This couplet was made in 1971 when he was fifty-four years old. During that year, Rao, invited by Hans Frankel (1916–2003) and Ch’ung-ho Chang Frankel (born 1913), was a visiting professor at Yale University (1970-71). In order to assuage Rao’s homesickness, the Frankels frequently invited him to their home for dinner. Since Chang Ch'ung-ho studied calligraphy with Shen Yinmo (1883–1971), and was deeply interested in poetry, Kunqu opera and music, during their get-togethers, they often composed poems, played the qin, wrote calligraphy, and painted.Qianshen Bai, “Literati Legacy in the Modern Era: Ch’ung-ho Chang Frankel and Friends,” in Mimi Gardner Gates ed., Fragrance of the Past: Chinese Calligraphy and Painting by Ch’ung-ho Chang Frankel and Friends (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 2006): 11-13. As a product of one such gathering, this couplet in cinnabar red ink features a script form inspired by Shang dynasty (ca. 1600–ca. 1100 b.c.) oracle bone inscriptions. While the slim characters may appear strange at first glance, it was the intent of the calligrapher to evoke the incised characters of unknown carvers of antiquity. By contrast, the dedicatory inscriptions in running script, the smaller characters in the lower part of each scroll, feature angular strokes with a tendency to slant to the upper right, recalling the Epitaph for Zhang Menglong (張猛龍碑) and Ni Yuanlu’s 倪元璐 (1593–1644) calligraphy. Hence, this single work embodies Rao’s wide-ranging interests in calligraphic scripts and models.

Another noteworthy point is that oracle bone script had remained abstruse long after its discovery in 1899, and the number of recognizable characters was very limited. As a result, most calligraphic couplets in oracle bone script are in the format of five- or seven-character-line couplets.Qianshen Bai, “Discursions on Couplets,” in Harold Mok ed., Double Beauty II: Qing Dynasty Couplets from the Lechangzai Xuan Collection (Hong Kong: Art Museum, Institute of Chinese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007): 28, 30. However, Rao’s erudition, his deep knowledge of oracle bone script, enables him to compose and write freely in this script. During his visit to Yale, he published Some Chinese Oracle Bones from Collections in the Main Museums of Europe, America and Asia (歐美亞所見甲骨錄存).“Rao Zongyi xueyi nianbaio” 饒宗頤學藝年表, in Chen Hanxi (陳韓曦) ed., Liju yu liuguo: jiedu Rao Zongyi梨俱預流果：解讀饒宗頤 (Guangzhou: Guangdong gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 2006): 332. It is very likely that this couplet was composed and written impromptu, and the fact that it bears no seal impressions also corroborates the informal nature of the gathering in which it was written.

© 2013 by the Seattle Art Museum