Catalogue And Study Of The Official Seals Of The Han Dynasty

An important source of the ancient seals,especially the official seals,is the funerary objects.For a long time before the twentieth century,this fact was not given sufficient attention.Since the 20 th century,with the introduction and development of modern archaeology,the unearthed materials have been enriched.At present,we already know that the phenomenon of burial official seals appeared no later than the Warring States Period,and gained its popularity during the Han Dynasty,framing a certain system.A large part of these official seals are funerary wares,which are usually different from practical seals.Only by recognizing the difference between the funerary sales and the practical seals can we correctly understand the message conveyed by the seals,and we have to figure out the distinction in order to distinguish the funerary sales from the practical seals.Systematic research on this issue has been blank until the 1990 s,several scholars did some summative work then.For the nearly three decades,new excavated materials and new research results have emerged endlessly,and it is necessary to reorganize and study this materials.In this context,this paper organizes and studies the official seals unearthed in Han tombs,since the system of burial official seals was formed in the Han Dynasty.The main body of this paper is formed by five chapters.The first part is the introduction,including three sections.The first section is the description of the research object,pointing out that the object of this paper is the official seals unearthed in the Han tombs,and to explain the concepts of "official seal" and "burial seal" used in this paper."Official seal" refers to the seals with the characteristics of official seals,including the publicprivate seal;"burial seal" refers to the seals unearthed in the tomb,including funerary sales and the burial practical seals.The second section is to explain the purpose of the study and the origin and significance of this topic.The third section is a review of academic history.The second part discusses the institutional basis of burial official seals,including three sections.The first section discusses the official seal management system of Han Dynasty.There was a strict and standardized official seal management system in the Han Dynasty.The production,granting,use and recovery of official seals were all regulated accordingly.The forms of official seals of different ranks were different.The second section discusses the burial system and its formation process.Despite this official seal management system,there was a legal burial phenomenon among the nobles and senior officials,which became a system in the Eastern Han Dynasty.But this system only covered nobles and senior officials.The third section discusses the sources of the burial seals.Through the analysis of the two systems,we can figure out four sources of the buria official seals of the Han Dynasty: Institutional burial,special granted burial,pravite funerary burial and burial practical seals under exceptional circumstances.Official seals from different sources have their own scope of application and characteristics,and the private funerary wares,which contains the largest number,must be different from the practical seals.The third part is the collation and interpretation of the burial seals of the Han Dynasty,including two sections.In the first section,there is an overview of the excavations of burial official seals of the Han Dynasty.The author has gathered the published materials up to March 2020,collecting 198 seals.According to the four levels of official seals discussed in the previous chapter,they are divided into five sections: emperor empress seals,gold seals,silver seals and unverified seals.To each seal,there is a brief interpretation.In addition to explaining the contents of the seals,the author pays more attention to analyze whether a seal is funerary or practical.Besides,several seals of unclear forms are also discussed.The fourth part discusses the characteristics of all kinds of burial seals and general identification methods.According to the first two chapters,this chapter divides the burial official seals into three categories: the practical seals,the special granted funerary seals and the private funerary seals.The practical seal and the special granted funerary seals are same in form,but the private funerary seals are much more complex.From three aspects of "material","shape" and "literature",the author summarizes the differences between private funerary seals and practical seals.We can distinguish different types of burial seals by analyzing whether there are signs of use,whether the shape of the seal conforms to the norms,and the status of the tomb owner.These methods can also be used for preliminary identification of other existing official seals.Whereas,actual situations may be much more complicated than the analysis in the paper,we should treat it dialectically.The fifth part is the conclusion,which summarizes the whole paper and points out the shortcomings of it.The author failed to answer some of the questions raised,only puts forward phased views that remain to be further discussed.