The small seal script is an archaic
script style of
written Chinese. It developed within the
state of Qin during the
Eastern Zhou dynasty (771–256 BC), and was then promulgated across China in order to replace script varieties used in other
ancient Chinese states following
Qin's wars of unification and establishment of the
Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) under
Qin Shi Huang, the first
emperor of China.
History
During the
Eastern Zhou dynasty (256 BC), local varieties of
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only on ...
forms had developed across the country, producing the 'scripts of the six states' ()—which were later collectively referred to as
large seal script
The term large seal script traditionally refers to written Chinese dating from before the Qin dynasty—now used either narrowly to the writing of the Western and early Eastern Zhou dynasty (403 BCE), or more broadly to also include the ...
. This variance was considered unacceptable by the nascent
Qin dynasty (221–206 BC), who saw it as a hindrance to timely communication, trade, taxation, and transportation, as well as being a potential vector for fomenting political dissent. Around 220 BC,
Qin Shi Huang ordered a systematic standardization of the country's weights, measures, and currency, as well as its writing system. Character forms which differed from those used by Qin scribes were discarded, with the Qin forms becoming standard across the entire empire.
Standardization
The standardized use of small seal characters was promulgated via the ''
Cangjiepian'' primer compiled by Qin Shi Huang's ministers—namely his chancellor
Li Si. This compilation, which was claimed to include 3,300 characters, is no longer extant, and is known only through Chinese commentaries over the centuries. Several hundred characters from fragmented commentaries were collected during the
Qing dynasty
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...
(1644–1912), and recent archeological excavations in
Anhui
Anhui is an inland Provinces of China, province located in East China. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze and Huai rivers, bordering Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the east, Jiang ...
have uncovered several hundred more on bamboo strips, showing the order of the characters. However, the script found was not the small seal script, as the discovery dates back to the
Han period.
Encoding
The small seal script was initially proposed for inclusion in
Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
in 2015. The 723-page proposal lists many of the best-known examples of Qing-era commentary images.
, the proposal remains under discussion.
References
External links
Topical Document List: Seal Script Unicode
* Lookup of seal script is available through some online dictionaries. See th
KU librariesguide for examples.
{{list of writing systems
Culture of the Qin dynasty
Obsolete writing systems
Chinese script style