Of the upper inscription, the leftmost character is pretty clearly 師 and I think the next one is very probably 先 (if you put that into a modern-to-sealscript lookup you get some things that look about right). Complete fluke (google-images for 先師) led me to 聖 as the third character, and from there in turn I got 至 as the fourth.
I think this should be read right-to-left, so reversing it we get
至聖先師 . Character-by-character translation [which should never be trusted!] gives most-sage-former-teacher, and I gather from google that it's a way of referring to Confucius (but not his actual name, which is written 孔子 by just about everybody except Wikipedia's English page, which has 孔夫子).
The lower inscription is also r-l and reads 杏壇. An online dictionary claims "school platform, the teaching rostrum; orig.the apricot grove where Confucius taught".
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-11-25 12:03 am (UTC)Of the upper inscription, the leftmost character is pretty clearly 師 and I think the next one is very probably 先 (if you put that into a modern-to-sealscript lookup you get some things that look about right). Complete fluke (google-images for 先師) led me to 聖 as the third character, and from there in turn I got 至 as the fourth.
I think this should be read right-to-left, so reversing it we get 至聖先師 . Character-by-character translation [which should never be trusted!] gives most-sage-former-teacher, and I gather from google that it's a way of referring to Confucius (but not his actual name, which is written 孔子 by just about everybody except Wikipedia's English page, which has 孔夫子).
The lower inscription is also r-l and reads 杏壇. An online dictionary claims "school platform, the teaching rostrum; orig.the apricot grove where Confucius taught".