曽

Unicode: U+66FD

Pinyin: zēng céng

Structure

Related substructures

Precursors

Oracle Bone Script

c. 1300–1050 BCE (Late Shang)

---

Inscriptions carved on turtle plastrons and animal bones for divination and record-keeping in the late Shang royal court; the oldest large attested corpus of written Chinese.Wikipedia ->

Bronze Inscriptions

c. 1200–221 BCE (Shang–Zhou; continues into the Warring States)

---

Inscriptions cast or engraved on ritual bronzes, especially prominent from the Western Zhou onward; a major source for early political, ritual, and social history.Wikipedia ->

Small Seal Script

Standardized 221–206 BCE (Qin); developed earlier in Qin

---

The standardized seal script promulgated after Qin’s unification, based on earlier Qin seal forms and used as an empire-wide norm.Wikipedia ->

Transmitted Pre-Qin Forms

Pre-Qin forms (≤221 BCE) / late 2nd century BCE onward (Han → later textual transmission)

---

Pre-Qin character forms preserved through later textual transmission (often discussed as the 'Old Text' / guwen tradition). Shaped by repeated copying, they can diverge from excavated Warring States materials.Wikipedia ->

Last Modified: 2026-01-29 11:48 UTC