The Social Significance of Oracle Bone Inscriptions

Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty is the earliest documentary record discovered by China. Now, Oracle Bone Inscriptions has become a remarkable world discipline, with more than 500 Chinese and foreign scholars engaged in research and published more than 3,000 monographs and papers. It is of great significance to history, philology and archaeology.

Sima Qian has an article "Yin Benji" in Historical Records, which records the lineage and history of Shang Dynasty in detail. In the past, many historians were skeptical about these records, because there were no written records and no physical materials to prove them. At the beginning of this century, Luo Zhenyu found the names of the first man and the first king in Shang Dynasty in his Oracle bones, which confirmed that the small village where these Oracle bones came from was the location of Yin Ruins, and the history books said that it was "Huanshui South, on Yin Ruins".

After that, Wang Guowei, a scholar, made a detailed textual research on the ancient princes of Shang Dynasty seen in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and compared them with the records in Historical Records, which confirmed the credibility of Yin Benji in Historical Records. Yin Ruins was the first 10 king of Shang Dynasty. In BC 13 18, Pan Geng moved his capital from Yan (near Qufu, Shandong) to Yin (around Xiaotun Village). Since then, it has experienced the eighth generation of 12 kings and established its capital here for 273 years. These research results have advanced the reliable history of China by one thousand years. From the discovery and identification of a piece of Oracle Bone Inscriptions in the Shang Dynasty to the affirmation of a dynasty more than 3000 years ago and 600 years ago. What an amazing discovery! In this way, some scholars in the 1920s believed that China's credible history began in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and the trend of "suspecting the past" was completely denied.

A large number of Oracle bones unearthed in Yin Ruins reflect the prosperity of divination in Shang Dynasty. From state affairs to private life, such as sacrifice, climate, harvest, conquest, hunting, sick people, childbirth, going out, etc. The royal family and nobles all asked God for advice until they decided to stop. As a result, divination became a major event in the political life of the country, and the court set up special institutions and divination officials. Oracle Bone Inscriptions with inscriptions is preserved as a national archive and piled in caves. Therefore, Oracle Bone Inscriptions became the first-hand material to study the history of Shang Dynasty, reflecting all aspects of social life from BC 1300 to BC 1000.

From the first discovery of/kloc-0 in Oracle Bone Inscriptions in 899 to 20/kloc-0 in 3 years, according to the statistics of scholar Hu Houxuan, * * more than 54,600 Oracle bones/kloc-0 were unearthed, including 97,600 in Chinese mainland, 30,200 in Taiwan Province, 89 in Hong Kong and 0/0 in Chinese mainland *. So far, about 4500 words have been engraved on these Oracle bones, and about 2000 words have been read so far.

China's writing sprouted earlier. In the Neolithic pottery of Yangshao culture, various carving symbols were found, which became the embryonic form of China characters. After two or three thousand years of gestation and development, China's writing reached a basic mature stage in Shang Dynasty. Oracle Bone Inscriptions has a certain system, strict laws, exquisite descriptions and rich contents, which plays an important role in the study of ancient Chinese characters in China. In the past, the study of ancient Chinese characters was mainly based on inscriptions on Shang and Zhou bronzes, such as Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is 1500 years earlier than Shuo Wen Jie Zi, and it comes from the unearthed cultural relics directly excavated, so it has high credibility, which is of great value for studying the origin and development of Chinese characters, correcting the mistakes in Shuo Wen Jie Zi and solving the outstanding problems in bronze inscriptions.