CHUBS: A Large-Scale Dataset of Chu Bamboo Slip Script

Code | Paper (upcoming)

Introduction

This is a large-scale dataset of Chu bamboo slip (CBS, Chinese: 楚简, chujian) script, an ancient Chinese script used during the Spring and Autumn period over 2,000 years ago. This dataset consists of two parts:

1. The main dataset where each example is an image and the corresponding text label. This part is contained in the glyphs.zip ZIP file.
2. A character detection dataset where each example is a bamboo slip and the corresponding bounding boxes of each CBS character. This part is contained in the detection-data.zip ZIP file.
3. A POS tagging dataset where each example is a sentence and POS annotations (using the BIO format). This part is contained under the pos-tagging-data directory.

This data is compiled to foster applications of NLP methods in the study of Chu bamboo slip script, and possibly other forms of ancient Chinese.

Data Source

The sources for this dataset are shown in the following list.

Source name	Chinese name	# documents	# slips	# characters
Tsinghua University Slips	清华简	50	1,402	31,468
Shanghai Museum Slips	上博简	60	881	25,795
Baoshan Slips	包山简	4	337	12,647
Guodian Slips	郭店简	18	705	11,865
Geling Slips	葛陵简	8	743	6,209
Zenghouyi Slips	曾侯乙简	4	198	6,016
Jiudian Slips	九店简	2	232	2,956
Wangshan Slips	望山简	3	273	2,218
Changtaiguan Slips	长台关简	3	148	1,504
Zidanku Silk	子弹库帛	7	7	1,471
Yangtianhu Slips	仰天湖简	1	42	335
Wulipai Slips	五里牌简	1	18	109
Xiyangpo Slips	夕阳坡简	1	2	54
Ynagjiawan Slips	杨家湾简	1	38	41
Caojiagang Slips	曹家岗简	1	7	34
Total		164	5,033	102,722

Copyright

As mentioned in the paper, the main CHUBS dataset is extracted and processed from existing openly available textbooks and quality-checked by our team. Compiling and analyzing such data is a common practice within the paleography field in ancient Chinese script, and we have consulted with legal experts to make sure that this data can be released under a permissive license such as Apache 2.0. The POS tagging data is annotated by our team, and also has no legal concerns related to its usage.