Chinese Bronze Script: The Writing Cast into Ancient Vessels

There are currently several thousand ancient Chinese bronzes with writing on them. 

And likely many more waiting to be discovered.

They preserve script brilliantly and document some of China’s earliest history.

Thanks to them, we can see how Chinese writing forged ahead towards its later forms.

Contents

Bronzes and bronze script

Bronze script (金文) (sometimes referred to as bronze inscription script or bronzeware script) is a form of Chinese great seal script found on ancient objects.

Some of these objects were gold, iron or pottery. However, the vast majority were on bronze objects, particularly ritual ones.

Common bronze objects include:

• Sacrificial vessels
• Food and wine containers
• Weapons
• Coins
• Objects for measurement standards.

And more.

They date back to the between approximately 2,200 and 4,000 years ago, from China’s Shang (1760 BC – 1520 BC) and Zhou (1046 BC – 256 BC) dynasties.

(China’s iron age did not begin until around 2,600 years ago, which explains why bronze was so commonly used.)

This vast time frame means that like great seal script more generally, bronze seal script changed over time.

So, many characters have more variation in form than other scripts.

Most occurrences of bronze script on objects contain around 20 characters. 

A very small number contain anywhere upwards of about 200.

Alternative name: bell inscription script

Many – but not all – of the ritual bronze objects with bronze script engravings are bell shaped. 

This lends them their alternative name: zhongdingwen (钟鼎文) – which translates literally as ‘bell pot script’ (a name rarely – if ever – used in English translation). 

Here ding (鼎) refers to a kind of bell-shaped cooking pot that had three of four legs.

The examples of these found with bronze script were not used for cooking, but for commemorative and ritual purposes.

A note on bronze script variation and Chinese civilisation

Bronze object forms and their usages and scripts vary a lot.

This is partly because the states, cultures, and periods that used them does, too.

That said, Chinese civilisation pre-dates the Chinese nation. This clear from many sources. 

For example, Confucius lived around 2,500 years ago, during the Warring States period (when bronzes were still being made). 

At the time, many recognisably Chinese states competed against one another. 

And educated men like Confucius travelled between them looking for work in their administrations. 

Furthermore, surviving writings from the time (including Confucius’ Analects) make a clear distinction between (Chinese) civilisation and ‘barbarian’ societies.

Bronze script and great seal script

Approximate version of Chinese bronze script (/large seal script) side by side with Chinese modern regular script.

The lines are from Confucius’ Analects: “Confucius said: ‘A man survives by his integrity. If he survives without it, it’s down to luck.'” (6. 19)

Bronze script and great seal script are essentially the same script translated onto different materials (in different ways).

So, their names are different because bronze script is found on bronze whereas large seal script is found on stone, jade, bamboo, and other materials.

This means that bronze script is a type of great seal script (which itself is part of the wider category of seal script). 

However, its material and method of creation (chisel, not brush) and formal usage mean there are differences.  

Bronze script features

Because of the variation in bronze script over time, it is difficult to concisely summarise its features.

And two trends take place between the earliest and latest bronze script characters.

• The characters move away from pictorial representation forms. I.e., they become simpler in design but more complex in the level of meaning they represent.
• The technology used to create them becomes more sophisticated. As a result, the characters become more refined and uniform.

Some generalisations are possible. 

For a start, like seal script more broadly, and its predecessor oracle script, bronze script characters feature many rounded lines and forms alongside straight and square ones.

Components of characters also often tilt in a way that they don’t in later scripts. This sometimes subtracts from the scripts sense of symmetry.

Bronze script creation techniques

Bronze script was transferred onto objects in two ways:

• Relief: Created with moulds to make characters look raised from background
• Intaglio: Engraved into objects. 

Early on, during the Shang and Western Zhou dynasties, inscriptions were first written and then engraved onto moulds for casting reliefs. 

This led to them having a more handwritten appearance.

Later, during the late Eastern Zhou period, the intaglio method of incising characters directly onto bronze was used.

More precision was required for this and the script naturally become more uniform. 

Deviating incisions to accommodate idiosyncrasies of handwriting, as could be done with reliefs for moulds, was no longer convenient.

Timeline of bronze script

Early bronze script: Shang dynasty (1760 BC – 1520 BC)

The oldest examples of bronze script date back to the Shang dynasty (1760 BC – 1520 BC). 

These examples typically contain only two or three characters, often inscriptions of the bronze objects’ owner.

The characters themselves were both more pictorial-based and complicated than later bronze script forms. 

This reflects the Chinese language steadily moving away from its early picture-based designs to more abstract forms that using less strokes.

The relatively thick, rounded and decorative bronze script characters often tapered at the end of each line. 

They look similar to their predecessor: the ancient oracle bone script. 

Like oracle bone script, there is variation in forms of the same characters and lines used for them.

And like most Chinese writing up until the 20^th century, they were written from top to bottom and left to right.

They had more characters and complex meanings to convey, including honorary declarations for individuals and tribes.

Queen Mother Wu bronze vessel

In 1939, during the second world war,on farmland in Wuguan Village, Henan Province, the Queen Mother Wu (司母戊鼎) bronze vessel was discovered. 

Weighing in at 832.84 KG, this was the largest find of its kind to date.

There are a few stories about its discovery. It is said to have taken 3 nights of digging to fully unearth. 

It has been said that villagers re-buried it after discovery to hide it from the Japanese (then occupying China). 

And also, that an antique dealer named Xiao Yinqing initially had one of its four legs sawn off, then gave up and asked villagers to re-bury it until he could move it.

Either way, it was next uncovered, seven years later in 1946, another war was waging in China: The Chinese Civil War (1945 – 1949). 

The Nationalist government exhibited the vessel in their capital of Nanjing in 1948. 

But when they fled to Taiwan a year later, the vessel was not amongst the art they took with them. Its weight was a likely reason for this.

The vessel was commissioned by King Wending (reigned 1112 – 1102 BC) for his late mother, who had been queen. Muwu was her posthumous title.

It only has three characters. They are inscribed on its inside:

• 后 (hòu; read by some scholars as si): Empress; queen
• 母 (mǔ): Mother
• 戊 (wù): Wu (name)

These characters are large and written with thick, artistically rounded lines.

Middle bronze script: Western Zhou (1027 BC – 771 BC)

During the Western Zhou dynasty’s two and a half centuries of rule, bronze metallurgy and engraving techniques became increasingly sophisticated. 

And the script became more elegant, especially towards the end of this period.

It began to look less ‘messy’ with more symmetrical, simpler and standardized characters. And an overall uniformity in the arrangement of pieces developed.

Looking closer at the characters’ details, thinner, longer lines are clear. At times, the characters even appear to resemble small seal script.

San Ends Discord with Neighbouring State bronze basin

The date of discovery of the San Ends Discord with Neighbouring State (散氏盘铭) bronze basin is unknown.

However, basin itself is known to date back to the reign of King Li (r. 877 – 828 BC).

It features 357 characters ranged in nineteen approximately even lines. 

These were created using a mould to cast them on the basin’s inside. The rest of the basin features patterns and depictions of animals.

Some scholars have categorised its characters as cursive bronze script. This is because they appear to vary in thickness and appear to tilt somewhat, as if written at speed.

The whole piece discusses what is China’s oldest recoded property dispute. An exchange of land, including setting of its boundaries, is detailed.

Later bronze script: Eastern Zhou (771 BC – 256 BC)

The Zhou period can be separated into the Western and Eastern Zhou periods.

And the Eastern Zhou period itself can be separated into the Spring and Autumn (770 – 476 BC) and Warring States (475 – 221 BC) periods.

Bronze script characters continued to evolve through both of these periods. They reflected the changes in great seal script more generally.

This involved more abstract and easy-to-write characters which enabled quicker and more complex communication.

There is a clear trend of increasingly round and square shapes made up of thin strokes. 

Characters start to look still neater and tidier, individually and collectively. 

With today’s hindsight, we can clearly see the moves towards small seal script and even clerical script clearly coming.

Tax-Exempt Transport Permits for Lord Qi

The Tax-Exempt Transport Permits for Lord Qi (鄂君启铜节) is a remarkable bronze object designed to look like bamboo slips (split bamboo – this was regularly used for writing on).

It dates back to nearly 2,400 years, to 353 BC. And it was unearthed in Shouxian county, Anhui Province in 1957.

There are two pieces, which are each divided by realistic bamboo section borders into two sections.

One of them is a tax exemption pass for land transport. It is made up of 145 characters arranged in nine columns on both of its sections.

The other is a pass for water transport. It contains 163 golden characters also arranged in nine columns of each section.

At first glance, it’s clear that great care was taken to create an aesthetically pleasing and well-ordered object.

The characters are clearly uniform in overall size and thickness of strokes (fundamental principles of mature Chinese scripts).

The Qin (221 – 206 BC) and Han (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD) dynasties

The Qin dynasty unified China under a single empire for the first time. 

Its rule was brief (about 15 years). But it set a precedent for unification of administration and culture that its successor, the Han dynasty built on (the Han lasted for nearly 400 years).

One of the trends that emerged later in the Han dynasty was for stone stele (large pillars) to record events and laws. 

Stone stele could be left outside in all weathers. And artisans could produce more flexible, refined calligraphy on them than bronze.

This latter point is important, as new scripts developed rapidly during this period thanks to technological advancements such as the invention of paper.

Thereafter, bronze lost their prominence in terms of practical usage.

However, they were still considered sacred by many rulers and elites. 

Emperor Wu of Han changes his reign name

In 116 BC, a bronze tripod cauldron (a ding [鼎]) was discovered near the Fen Rver (in today’s Shanxi Province). 

So, the Emperor Wu of Han (141 – 87 BC) changed his reign name to ‘origin [of] tripod cauldron’  (yuanding元鼎). 

(Chinese rulers often divided up their reigns between different periods of varying lengths that were given auspicious names).