Small Seal Script
The xiaozhuan (小篆, xiaozhuan style), also called small seal script, was refined by the adviser Li Si (李斯, Li Si) at the command of Emperor Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇, Qin Shihuang), founder of the Qin (秦, Qin, 221–207 BCE) dynasty, who unified China. It was introduced in 218 BCE to unify the scripts of his empire as part of standardization in other areas: weights and measures and axle widths. Alongside dazhuan (大篆, dazhuan, literally: large seal script), xiaozhuan is a variety of zhuanshu (篆书, zhuanshu, seal script), which had existed for around 500 years by the time of the reform to unify character forms. This, in turn, belongs to the so-called shiguwen (石鼓文, shiguwen, literally: writing on stone drums) style. Ten stone drums were discovered in the territory of the former state of Qin as early as the Tang dynasty, when interest in written monuments of the past first awakened in China. The same type of script appears on the famous Pingyang stele, also found in the lands of the former kingdom of Qin.
Li Si wrote 20 chapters of rhymed character lists in xiaozhuan on three scrolls, the «Cangjiepian» (仓颉篇, Cang Jie pian, literally: «Cang Jie’s List»), and added the character collection «Boxuepian» (博学篇, Boxuepian) by the court chronicler and grand astrologer Humu Jing (胡毋敬, Humu Jing) and «Yuanlipian» (爰历篇, Yuanlipian) by the official in charge of the imperial carriages, Zhao Gao (赵高, Zhao Gao). By decree of Qin Shi Huang, «Cang Jie’s List» was adopted as a standard alongside the equally famous «List of Historiographer Zhou».
An important period in the history of Chinese writing, when characters underwent significant changes, was the era of the Han (汉, 206 BCE – 220 CE) dynasties. At this time, «Cang Jie’s List», which had grown to 3,300 characters in 55 chapters of 60 characters each, was repeatedly revised and expanded. After editing by Yang Xiong (扬雄, Yang Xiong) and Ban Gu (班固, Ban Gu), and later by Jia Fang (贾鲂, Jia Fang), it came to contain 123 chapters with 7,380 characters, none of which was repeated. As a result, «Cang Jie’s List» became a universal reference tool for Chinese characters for several centuries.
Zhuanshu is characterized by a particular economy of strokes: characters written in this style have no dots, hooks, angular bends, or changes in line thickness caused by varying brush pressure. The brush was not yet widespread in the period described, and varying pressure is mentioned only in relation to techniques for reproducing this manner of writing in later times. The overall outlines of the characters fit within narrow vertical rectangles. Xiaozhuan is somewhat more symmetrical than dazhuan. Also worthy of particular attention is the variety of seal script called tadpole writing — kedoushu (蝌蚪书, kedoushu) or kedouzhuan (蝌蚪篆, kedouzhuan). The beginning of a character stroke in this style has a very pronounced, disproportionately large thickening, while its body and end are so thin that the entire stroke resembles a tadpole. This writing style did not become widespread, apparently not so much for aesthetic reasons as because writing implements evolved: character strokes in this style were drawn with a sharpened bamboo stick dipped in a special colored glue.