商晚期 亞鼎

The cruciform character ya is sometimes termed as yaxing (ya shape) and is often combined with other pictographs to represent clans. In the Shang dynasty, clans with the ya added to their clan names are believed to be those that were conferred with the title of Marquis. It is very rare to find single-character inscription of ya. See, a late Shang bronze liding cast with a single ya character in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated by Chang Kuang-yuan in A Catalogue of Shang Dynasty Bronze Inscriptions, Ancient Chiense Script From the 1st Millenium B.C., Taipei, 1995, no. 15.