The Study Of Characters On Qin Sealing Clay

Sealing clay is a kind of mud with characters printed by seal, used on ancient documents,letters or goods of the early area, in order to keep secret. During the warring states period began to rise, and then during Qin and Han dynasties, it reached the most achievement. With paper improvement and widely used, it completed the mission of clay era and gradually been from the stage of history. From the late Qing dynasty found till today, sealing clay was always attracted by epigraphy scholars and collectors, because it provided evidences to support for the research of history in Qin and Han dynasties and other related studies. Sealing clay is the most important discovery after inscriptions on bones or tortoise,bronze inscriptions and characters on bamboo slips in history of writing.Qin sealing clay is an important part of clay, but ancient literature cataloguing of Qin clay has been less. Since 1997, the Qin dynasty sealing clays unearthed and the research for Qin dynasty blossomed. This paper takes《Collects of Qin Sealing Clay》as the research object, and《Newly Unearthed Qin Sealing Clay》as supplementary material, and tries to analyze the difference degree of figure inside Qin sealing clay.And also describes the spcial characters used on Qin sealing clay. Further according to the figure of difference phenomenon between characters on Qin sealing clay and Seal, explores classifications of regularity through these differences. Through theses differents, tries to analyze the reason why Qin sealing clay and Seal has so many differents. And from this study, finally set forth the significance and value of the figure in three aspects------the history of writing and characters,the history of Qin and Han dynasty and the art of seal-engraving .