The small seal script (), or Qin script (, ''Qínzhuàn''), is an archaic form of

Chinese calligraphy Chinese calligraphy is the writing of Chinese characters as an art form, combining purely visual art and interpretation of the literary meaning. This type of expression has been widely practiced in China and has been generally held in high est ...

. It was standardized and promulgated as a national standard by the government of

Qin Shi Huang Qin Shi Huang (, ; 259–210 BC) was the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of a unified China. Rather than maintain the title of " king" ( ''wáng'') borne by the previous Shang and Zhou rulers, he ruled as the First Empero ...

, the founder of the Chinese

Qin dynasty The Qin dynasty ( ; zh, c=秦朝, p=Qín cháo, w=), or Ch'in dynasty in Wade–Giles romanization ( zh, c=, p=, w=Ch'in ch'ao), was the first dynasty of Imperial China. Named for its heartland in Qin state (modern Gansu and Shaanxi), th ...

Name

Xiaozhuan, formerly

romanized Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, an ...

as Hsiao-chuan, is also known as the seal script or lesser seal script.

History

Before the Qin conquest of the six other major

warring states The Warring States period () was an era in ancient Chinese history characterized by warfare, as well as bureaucratic and military reforms and consolidation. It followed the Spring and Autumn period and concluded with the Qin wars of conques ...

of Zhou China, local styles of

characters Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...

had evolved independently of one another for centuries, producing what are called the "Scripts of the Six States" (), all of which are included under the general term "

great seal script The large seal script or great seal script () is a traditional reference to Chinese writing from before the Qin dynasty (i.e. before 221 BCE), and is now popularly understood to refer narrowly to the writing of the Western and early Eastern Zho ...

". However, under one unified government, the diversity was deemed undesirable as it hindered timely communication, trade, taxation, and transportation, and as independent scripts might be used to represent dissenting political ideas. Hence, Emperor

mandated the systematic unification of weights, measures, currencies, etc., and the use of a standard writing script. Characters which were different from those found in Qin were discarded, and the Qin's small seal characters became the standard for all regions within the empire. This policy came in about 220 BC, the year after Qin's unification of the Chinese states.

Diringer, David David Diringer (16 June 1900 – 13 February 1975) was a British linguist, palaeographer and writer. He was the author of several well-known books about writing systems. Biography Diringer was born to Jacob Munzer and Mirl Diringer on 16 June ...

982 Year 982 ( CMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Summer – Emperor Otto II (the Red) assembles an imperial expeditionary force at Tar ...

(1982). ''The Book Before Printing: Ancient, Medieval, and Oriental.'' Courier Dover Publications. .

Standardization

The standardized use of small seal characters was promulgated via the ''

Cangjiepian The ''Cangjiepian'', also known as the ''Three Chapters'' (, ''sāncāng''), was a BCE Chinese primer and a prototype for Chinese dictionaries. Li Si, Chancellor of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE), compiled it for the purpose of reforming wr ...

'', a primer compiled by Qin Shi Huang's ministers. This compilation, stated to contain 3,300 characters, is no longer extant, and is known only through Chinese commentaries through the centuries. Several hundred characters from fragmented commentaries were collected during the Qing period, and recent archeological excavations in

Anhui Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze Riv ...

, China, have uncovered several hundred more on bamboo strips, showing the order of the characters. However, the script found is not the small seal script, as the discovery dates from Han times.

Unicode

The small seal script has been proposed for inclusion in

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, whi ...

. The 723-page proposal from 2015 lists much of the then-known examples of Qing dynasty commentary images. This topic remains under discussion by Unicode's working group as of April 2020.

References

External links

Topical Document List: Seal Script