篆书书法字典：上千家书法名家和碑帖 14

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Seal script is a collective term for Oracle Bone Script, Large Seal Script, and Small Seal Script. Oracle Bone Script, dating back three thousand years, is the earliest surviving recognizable script mainly used for divination. Its strokes are thin and straight with mostly straight lines. It features square brushes, round brushes, and sometimes pointed brushes with many "hanging needles" in the strokes. Large Seal Script includes Jinwen, Zhòu Script, and the scripts of the Six Kingdoms, preserving clear characteristics of ancient hieroglyphics. Small Seal Script, also known as "Qin Seal," was the standard script of the Qin State, an abbreviated version of Large Seal Script with uniform and easy-to-write characters.

Chinese characters emerged during the pre-Qin period of Fuxi's reign according to archaeologists' findings in oracle bone inscriptions on turtle shells and animal bones. Due to their use in divination to predict fortunes, they were called "inscriptions for divination," laying down the basic elements of Chinese calligraphy art: stroke techniques, structure, and composition. During the Yin and Zhou dynasties, inscriptions cast on bronze vessels known as Jinwen or "Zhong Ding Script" became widely popular.

Following Qin Shihuang's reign, it was collectively known as "Small Seal Script" or "Qin Seal."

Seal script is essentially official script used in bureaucracies. Records indicate that before the Qin Dynasty, Chinese character styles had no specific names, and Small Seal Script gradually evolved from the Qin era's scripts during the Spring and Autumn periods. Due to its official nature, Small Seal Script was only suitable for formal occasions such as inscribing achievements on stone tablets or decrees on tablets and military orders. Standard seal script features orderly arrangement, round brush strokes, clean and long lines presenting a solemn and beautiful style. Compared to Oracle Bone Script and Jinwen, it has certain basic characteristics: slender shapes with tight strokes extending downward creating a visual contrast between density and sparseness due to a top-down layout. Regardless of stroke lengths, all lines appear uniformly thick and thin. The consistent pen pressure gives a sense of purity and simplicity. With a tendency towards simplicity in character structures, seal script's layout forms a horizontal-sequential order. Qin Seal distinguishes between round brushes represented by Qin engraved stones and square brushes represented by Qin printed materials; this represents the common form of Qin Seal.

The transition from Han to Wei saw a decline in Qin Seal's prominence, mainly used for inscriptions on tablets and objects with rare independent seal scripts.

Tang Seal resurged with Li Yangbing's work but lost the grandeur and magnificence of Qin Seal.

Song Dynasty's study of inscriptions on bronze vessels coupled with Yuan Dynasty's revivalist calligraphic style contributed to a mild resurgence of seal script use; while notable seal script writers existed during this time, none surpassed its established conventions.

Ming Dynasty followed a balanced approach from Cheng Yuan; Qing Dynasty marked a flourishing stage in seal script diversity surpassing the Tang era but trailing behind the Qin era.