Abstract: In the Han-Dynasty stone carvings, the objects positioned at the centre of the planar graph are designated as the reference of directions, with the left on the surface standing for the east and the right for the west. This is the opposite to the direction positioning practice in modern graphics or cartography. This principle of direction positioning was not confined to the stone carvings alone, but was a general rule applied in almost all of the Han rituals such as the sword-wearing ritual of kings, the formation of marching armies, the ceremonial formation of vehicles and horses, and even the custom of walking males and females in groups. In all these practices, the objects or people at the center were designated as the reference. In terms of the direction positioning, Han-Dynasty stone carvings were in line with modern cartography in defining the two axis of the east-west and the south-north, but its position of the east-west was opposite to modern cartography. This is due to the fact that modern cartography regards the observer of map as the reference, while the Han carved stones took the objects or persons in the real space as the reference, with the observer positioned in face to the subject in the planar surface. The paper concludes that the right-left in the Han carved stones should be expressed within the Han cultural symbolic system, rather than in modern cartographical direction positioning principle.

Key words: Han-Dynasty stone carvings, cartography, cultural symbology, direction positioning