Chinese Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Chinese language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Does this phrase comes from a poetic or philosophical text?
Many thanks for your translation and your comments on this deal. Actually I had not too much problems with the 云 yún character because I have 2 others seals with this kind of symbolic script. My problem was with the 滿 mǎn character I was unable to recognize.
The characters are 白云長滿目, which roughly translates to
The vast expanse of white clouds, filling one's sight,
coming from the poem 《送廬山人歸林慮山》 by the Táng Dynasty poet Huángfǔ Rǎn.
「云」 is particularly difficult to identify, and is worthy of some additional explanation.
商
甲
乙12
合集21021商
甲
前6.43.4
合集17072春秋
金
姑發劍
集成11718戰國・楚
簡
緇衣・35
郭店楚簡
說文古文
雲部
說文解字
楷
「云」 (Baxter-Sagart OC: /*[ɢ]ʷə[r]/, clouds) is comprised of semantic 「𠄞」 (up/above, now written 「上」) and phonetic
(/*[ɢ](r)ə[r]ʔ/). This character is 「旬」 before the addition of a 「日」 component.
Occasionally, the 「𠄞」 part of 「云」 may be partially or fully omitted, and the remainder may be rotated or distorted in some way. This forms the inspiration behind
說文古文
雲部
說文解字
which is the shape in the seal.
References:
