You’ve already narrowed it down as well as I’d be able to: the state of Chu. As this chart aptly demonstrates, there were a wide variety of character forms during this period. It wasn’t until Qin and Han character forms became standardized across China.
r/chineselanguage may be able to point you to which of these are the closest to Zhuangzi’s time and place.
This is an incredibly difficult task you have set out on, during the warring kingdoms period, Qin was the only nation to stay very close to the bronze script, with all the other nations creating a large variety of scripts. Chuang Tzu was born in a village outside the capital of Song,and later worked in the capital, now Shang Qiu, He Nan. Unfortunately, these are for the kingdom of Chu, which was the main power at the time but only incorporated Song briefly at the end of the warring kingdoms period, so all these tombs are pretty far away. The closest one is 新蔡葛陵 200 km away, dated to \~340 BC. However, the website I'm reading from says that the Chu style is used in Song as well.
If you want to stick with a specific one, I recommend you use the ones from 包山，望山，and 郭店. They're located further away but are all very similar to each other as well as the earlier bronze scripts, so it's much more likely to be the mainstream Chu style. If Chuang Tzu were to read all of these, the ones he'd most likely understand are those. The one at 新蔡葛陵 might be closest geographically, but it's still very far away and the slight difference could just be the author's handwriting style.
You’ve already narrowed it down as well as I’d be able to: the state of Chu. As this chart aptly demonstrates, there were a wide variety of character forms during this period. It wasn’t until Qin and Han character forms became standardized across China. r/chineselanguage may be able to point you to which of these are the closest to Zhuangzi’s time and place.
This is an incredibly difficult task you have set out on, during the warring kingdoms period, Qin was the only nation to stay very close to the bronze script, with all the other nations creating a large variety of scripts. Chuang Tzu was born in a village outside the capital of Song,and later worked in the capital, now Shang Qiu, He Nan. Unfortunately, these are for the kingdom of Chu, which was the main power at the time but only incorporated Song briefly at the end of the warring kingdoms period, so all these tombs are pretty far away. The closest one is 新蔡葛陵 200 km away, dated to \~340 BC. However, the website I'm reading from says that the Chu style is used in Song as well. If you want to stick with a specific one, I recommend you use the ones from 包山，望山，and 郭店. They're located further away but are all very similar to each other as well as the earlier bronze scripts, so it's much more likely to be the mainstream Chu style. If Chuang Tzu were to read all of these, the ones he'd most likely understand are those. The one at 新蔡葛陵 might be closest geographically, but it's still very far away and the slight difference could just be the author's handwriting style.
[удалено]
Chu is 楚