What are the provisions of the seal system in Qin Dynasty?

In the Qin dynasty, only the emperor's seal could be called "seal", and only the emperor's seal could be made of jade. The official seal of an official can only be called "seal", and jade can't be used as printing material. From the name of the seal, the use of printed materials and other aspects, the insurmountable grade boundary between the emperor and officials was strictly defined.

Secondly, the official seal is unified. In the ancient seals of the pre-Qin period, there are many styles of official seals, with different sizes and shapes. However, the official seal system of Qin dynasty stipulated that the seal was square in shape and white in production. As for the low-level and humble official seal, it is half of the square official seal and is called "semi-pass seal". This is for future generations to distinguish officials by the size of the print. Half-inked Chinese character "day" mark. Therefore, one of the important bases for identifying Qin seal is the institutionalization of the use of border strips. Judging from these Qin seals, the seals on the side of the border really account for the majority.

Thirdly, the specialization of the official seal system in Qin Dynasty is another important evidence of the establishment of the seal system in Qin Dynasty. The Qin dynasty used the same characters as Xiao Zhuan, so the strokes of Xiao Zhuan were slightly square to adapt to the square seal face, which also formed the special characters of seal script. The characters on the seal mud in the Qin dynasty were also printed with seal script, so it can be seen that the printing of the Qin dynasty at that time used the same characters as seal script.