Stone chime

It names a suspended stone chime used in music and ritual.

磬’s instrument form comes from late-Neolithic stone chimes; a Dongxiafeng specimen from the late Xia–early Shang transition may be the earliest surviving. The written ancestor 殸 appears in oracle-bone inscriptions—animal bones or turtle shells inscribed for divination—with parts depicting a suspended stone being struck. In Shang–Zhou ritual music, single chimes became tuned 编磬 sets beside bronze bells. After the Eastern Han, 磬 also named a bowl-shaped bronze percussion instrument used by Buddhist monks.