>> Note, however, that most of the simplified character shapes are not
>> arbitrary but based on hand-written forms of `Caoshu' (草書), a
>> kind of cursive script used since centuries to write texts very
>> quickly with a brush.
>
> Interestingly, Daniels and Bright [1] say nothing about this.
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caoshu
Werner