Yang Xi
Although no autograph copies of Yang Xi's famous calligraphy have survived, one well-documented stone rubbing version of the revealed "Huangting jing" (黃庭經, Yellow Court Scripture) has been given special attention. The Song dynasty connoisseur and critic Mi Fu (1051-1107) analyzed four manuscripts of the "Huangting jing", and said the best one was written on a silk scroll with a provenance that he traced back to the early 8th century. Mi disagreed with a former owner Tao Gu (陶穀, 903-970) who said that Wang Xizhi wrote the manuscript, and concluded it was a superb example of calligraphy from the Six Dynasties period. The Ming dynasty calligrapher and painter Dong Qichang (1555-1636) was so impressed by the Mi Fu manuscript that he made a copy, recommend it as the best model for studying "kaishu" script, and included it as the first example in his classic "Xihong tang fatie" (戲鴻堂法帖, Calligraphy Compendium of the Hall of the Playful Goose). Dong's colophon attributed the calligraphy to Yang Xi himself and described it as "the traces of a holy immortal" (Ledderose 1984: 262-263, who calls Dong's attribution to Yang "extremely optimistic").
Epigraphy
Most of the forms of writing known to us originated in some system of picture-writing (cf. also pictography, which developed into a hieroglyphic system. Such systems appear to have originated independently in different parts of the world — in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Crete, among the Hittites and in China and America. The evidence for all of these is mainly to be found in inscriptions. The development from Ideographs (or direct representation of an object or idea) to symbols of phonetic value, and so to syllabaries or alphabets, took place in many different systems to various degrees. But the first people to invent a completely alphabetic system of writing were the Phoenicians, from whom the Greeks borrowed (some scholars believe, but with no proving) it with certain modifications and improvements. From the Greeks was derived the Latin, and from the two all the alphabets of European peoples. It is still a matter of dispute whether the Phoenician was derived from the Egyptian.
The hieroglyphic symbols naturally tended to be conventionalised and simplified for convenience of cutting, in accordance with the materials and tools employed. In many cases they developed from a pictorial to a linear form. It is possible that some of these linear forms may not be derived from hieroglyphs, but from purely conventional geometrical forms. such as widely used at all periods and places as owners' or masons' marks. The tendency of linear forms to become wedge-shaped is most conspicuous in cuneiform, but as has been noticed, the same tendency occurs in Greek inscriptions incised on bronze.