小篆

[Leaton]

I found this pendant, it is nothing special, very simple. I do not understand 小篆, and am curious if anyone could tell me what these characters mean. Thank you for your help.

[OneEye]

This won't be too helpful, since I'm not that great with Seal script, but here's what I can figure out:

？生兄合？？？人？上子？

I'm almost 100% sure on 子, the others not quite as sure, but fairly sure. Of course I may be wrong on all counts. I know someone else will be able to help you out better, but I just wanted to try my hand at it.

[Leaton]

So far, I had come up with ？生只?？？？人？上子？. So we agree on all but one, and I can only assume you're close with 合. It's still not quite enough for me to understand what it is saying, and I'm not sure which of us is more correct on the third character (只/兄). Thank you very much for your help, I do hope to learn more about this soon.

[OneEye]

Oh yeah, good call on 只.

[skylee]

Take a look -> http://www.xici.net/u17112762/d94662378.htm

[Leaton]

I fear my Chinese to be too weak to make sense of this. The translation of 浮生只合 安道故人 晚上子冈 doesn't seem to be coherent. Could you offer me an explanation of what this means or where it comes from?

[Guest Pipas]

晚安浮

上道生

子故只

冈人合

These are from the lines of 舒亶's 《虞美人．寄公度》：

芙蓉落尽天涵水，日暮沧波起，

背飞双燕贴云寒，独向小楼东畔倚栏看。

浮生只合樽前老, 雪满长安道。

故人早晚上高台, 寄我江南春色一枝梅。

It's about the end of autumn and the end of his career. About missing a dear friend who lives in the South.

(陆)子冈 is the name of the engraver.

[Hofmann]

It looks more like 浮生只合安道敀人晚上子岡 to me.

[OneEye]

I agree with Hofmann. I thought 故 and 冈 looked suspect. I know 冈 is a simplification of 岡, but that isn't what's in the picture.

[The guy from Beijing]

Why is the engraver's name so big? It almost looks as though it's part of the sentence, don't they usually keep it smaller than the text?

[Guest Pipas]

Because it's a fake?..