Idiomatic Acceptability and Graphic Identification in Bronze Inscriptions of the Spring and Autumn Period

International audienceAccording to the Report on the Spring and Autumn bronze inscriptions discovered in 1983 in Henan province, the character bao 'treasure; precious' is found written consecutively after the adverb yong 'always', giving ze yong bao bao. The presence of this unusual juxtaposition of two bao is puzzling because such a phrasal structure has never been encountered in any other bronze inscriptions. The Report did not deal with this dubious structure, or justify the identification of the two characters as bao bao (hereafter referred to as X and Y), not to mention any verification of its idiomatic acceptability. After a thorough check of relevant bronze rubbings, it became clear that the Report's graphic identification of X and Y is not valid and that neither of them has anything to do with the character bao. The new reading proposed here is based on graphic identifications and semantic analyses, buttressed with evidence from some similar idiomatic expressions found in Chinese bronze inscriptions of the same period