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

Name

Xiaozhuan, formerly romanized 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 of

Zhou China The Zhou dynasty ( ; Old Chinese ( B&S): *''tiw'') was a royal dynasty of China that followed the Shang dynasty. Having lasted 789 years, the Zhou dynasty was the longest dynastic regime in Chinese history. The military control of China by the ...

, local styles of characters 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". 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. 982(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'', 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, ...

. 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