What is the oldest surviving example of calligraphy?
Genji Monogatari Emaki
The word emaki stems from the word "emakimono" meaning "picture scrolls". The emakimono picture scrolls consisted of two designs: Pictures that were painted on a scroll with text added to the same scroll or a number of paintings that accompanied passages of text and were joined together in a scroll. The first known picture scroll was produced in Japan during the late ninth or tenth century. The Genji Monogatari picture scroll, however, was produced in the early twelfth century. Not only is the Genji Monogatari Emaki the oldest surviving monogatari scroll but it is also the oldest surviving non-Buddhist scroll in Japan. There is no exact date to the scroll, but it is estimated to being sometime between 1120 and 1140,[2] in which case it was created just a little over a century after Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji.
Sun Guoting
Sun Guoting () (646–691) or Sun Qianli (孫虔禮), was a Chinese calligrapher of the early Tang Dynasty, remembered for his cursive calligraphy and his "Shu Pu (書譜, "A Narrative on Calligraphy" or "Treatise on Calligraphy" " (ca. 687)). The work was the first important theoretical work on Chinese calligraphy, and has remained important ever since, though only its preface survived. The preface is the only surviving calligraphic work of Sun, therefore it is responsible for both Sun's reputation as an artist and as a theorist. The original handscroll can be seen at the National Palace Museum, in Taipei, Taiwan, and on its web site.