China Bronze
and Stone Rubbings Collection

Introduction

Compared to the transcribed literatures, the original, first-hand bronze and stone rubbings can better document the original materials of the ancient time. Initiated by Centre of Ancient Documents Preservation at Gansu province, this preservation project aims to digitize all the existing and upcoming original bronze and stone rubbings both in Taiwan and China. To date, 81,800 exclusive original bronze and rubbings from Gansu province were discovered and built into the digital database through 8 phases, well-edited by the expert team of sinologists and archaeologists.

Fill the gap of the lack of rubbing materials from Ming Dynasty to 21st century

Most databases of bronze/stone rubbings only have their materials collected till Yuan Dynasty. The “China Bronze and Stone Rubbings Collection” accommodates a huge amount of newly-discovered rubbings from Ming Dynasty, to the Republic period in the 21st century (221 B.C. –2000 A.D.), which occupies 80% of the collection. It’s worthy to notice that most of these rubbings and inscriptions are first-hand resources that have high historical value, also shown to the world in the digital form for the first time.

4-level classification system for quicker, precise search

To solve the searching issue resulted from the traditional classification, the database establishes a new system to classify all the materials. Under the categories of ”Bronze,” “Stone,” and “Others,” there are 4 levels to separate the materials by its topic or the time period. For example, there are 3 categories under the “Bronze” section which are ‘before Shang Dynasty,’ ‘Shang to Zhou Dynasty’ and ‘Qin to Han Dynasty.’ Furthermore, there is a few sub-divisions under each category. For instance, within the category of ‘Inscriptions of Han Chinese,’ there are 2 sub-divisions as Original Rubbing and Gravestone Epitaph. By utilising this system, user gets the higher search accuracy.

Rigorous digitising policy for the high academic quality

Aiming to provide the most accurate resources for scholars’ researches, our team is devoted to avoid any possible error by strictly following our digitising policy. First of all, much rubbings from one tablet have been done, then the best version among is selected and digitized. Secondly, all the ‘hard-to-identify’ characters are corrected and proofreaded triply by professional sinologists and researchers. Thirdly, each rubbing is accompanied by the detailed information, such as : alternative name, dynasty, reign title (Chinese era name), material, written pattern, discovered time and relic location, etc.

The “China Bronze and Stone Rubbings Collection” database keeps expanding its materials, which compiles 81,800 original bronze and stone rubbings with searchable full text (52 million characters of inscriptions) and full images (111,858 tablets) so far.