Libian
Comparison of historical forms for 馬 'horse'. The clerical form more closely resembles modern regular script.
| Libian | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 隸變 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 隶变 | ||||||||||
| Literal meaning | clerical change | ||||||||||
| 
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Libian was a gradual, systematic simplification of Chinese character forms during the 2nd century BC, by which the Chinese writing system transitioned from the seal script character forms promulgated during the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) to the clerical script characters associated with the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), through the process of making omissions, additions, or transmutations of the graphical form of a character to make it easier to write. Libian was one of two conversion processes towards the new clerical script character forms, with the other being liding, which involved the regularisation and linearisation of character shapes.