Chinese bronze inscriptions

Chinese bronze inscriptions
Inscription on the Song ding, c. 800 BC
Chinese	金文
Literal meaning	Bronze writing
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Jīnwén Wade–Giles Chin¹-wên² Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Gām-màhn Jyutping Gam¹-man⁴ Canton Romanization Gem¹-men⁴
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	鐘鼎文
Simplified Chinese	钟鼎文
Literal meaning	Bell and cauldron writing
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Zhōngdǐngwén Wade–Giles Chung¹-ting³-wên² Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Jūng-díng-màhn Jyutping Zung¹-ding²-man⁴ Canton Romanization Zung¹-ding²-men⁴

Chinese bronze inscriptions, also commonly referred to as Bronze script or Bronzeware script are writing in a variety of Chinese scripts on Chinese ritual bronzes such as zhōng bells and dǐng tripodal cauldrons from the Shang dynasty to the Zhou dynasty and even later. Early bronze inscriptions were almost always cast (that is, the writing was done with a stylus in the wet clay of the piece-mold from which the bronze was then cast), while later inscriptions were often engraved after the bronze was cast. The bronze inscriptions are one of the earliest scripts in the Chinese family of scripts, preceded by the oracle bone script.

For the early Western Zhou to early Warring States period, the bulk of writing which has been unearthed has been in the form of bronze inscriptions. As a result, it is common to refer to the variety of scripts of this period as "bronze script", even though there is no single such script. The term usually includes bronze inscriptions of the preceding Shang dynasty as well. However, there are great differences between the highly pictorial Shang emblem (aka "identificational") characters on bronzes (see "ox" clan insignia at left), typical Shang bronze graphs, writing on bronzes from the middle of the Zhou dynasty, and that on late Zhou to Qin, Han and subsequent period bronzes. Furthermore, starting in the Spring and Autumn period, the writing in each region gradually evolved in different directions, such that the script styles in the Warring States of Chu, Qin and the eastern regions, for instance, were strikingly divergent. In addition, artistic scripts also emerged in the late Spring and Autumn to early Warring States, such as Bird Script (鳥書 niǎoshū), also called Bird Seal Script (niǎozhuàn 鳥篆 ), and Worm Script (chóngshū 蟲書).