Cangjie

• Chinese/Japanese: 蒼頡 (Cangjie / Souketsu)

Cangjie is a legendary Chinese official credited with the invention of writing.

Legends written or compiled in the Warring States Period (450-220 BCE) indicate that he was an official in the court of the Yellow Emperor, and that when, inspired by the footprints of birds, he invented writing, it was such a cosmically momentous occasion that grains of millet rained from the sky, and ghosts wailed at night.

No written evidence of his life, nor any sign of the location of his tomb, have been discovered.

References

• K.C. Chang, Art, Myth, and Ritual, Harvard University Press (1983), 42, 81.