A quiet workbench, not another platform.

Codex Sinica is a small, independent collection of browser-based utilities for the study of ancient Chinese writing. It brings together fifteen focused tools that scholarship rarely bothers to package: oracle bone glyph lookup, bronze script queries, classical text punctuation, glyph evolution timelines, and a handful of supporting utilities for calendar and geography.

Why this exists

Serious paleography reference works are expensive, printed, and scattered across dozens of specialist volumes. The digital tools that do exist are usually locked inside institutional platforms, require API keys, or charge per query. That leaves out the enthusiasts, undergraduates, hobbyists and independent researchers who make up most of the interested audience.

This site is a modest attempt to close that gap. Every tool here is free to use, requires no account, and runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you upload leaves your device.

What it is not

Codex Sinica is not a replacement for peer-reviewed scholarship. Character interpretations, punctuation suggestions and glosses are offered as research aids — starting points for your own reading, not authoritative answers. When the tools flag uncertainty, take the flag seriously.

Who runs it

The site is maintained by a small group of amateur paleography enthusiasts and humanities-adjacent developers. We are not affiliated with any university, museum or publisher. All source data is drawn from openly licensed academic corpora and public-domain reference works.

Get involved

Corrections, glyph submissions and dataset contributions are welcome. See the Contact page for details.