When Oracle Bone Inscriptions appeared, were there other languages?

The earliest characters in the world (cuneiform) appeared about 5000 ~ 6000 years ago. The earliest in China is Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty, which has been around for 3000 years.

Cuneiform reference:

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Also known as "nail head characters" or "arrow characters". The script used in ancient West Asia. Write more on stones and clay tablets (clay bricks). The strokes are wedge-shaped like nails or arrows. It was created by Sumerians in the two river basins around 3000 BC. Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Persians, etc. Everyone uses this kind of writing to write their own language. It is also a common language for exchanging diplomatic documents between ancient countries. Archaeologists have discovered a large number of cuneiform tablets or inscriptions, which have been translated since the19th century, thus forming a new discipline to study ancient history-Assyrian studies.

Both the Euphrates River and the Tigris River originate from the Armenian Plateau in West Asia. Around 4000 BC, there were the earliest residents here-Sumerians. They created a splendid Sumerian civilization, and what best embodies the characteristics of this civilization is their writing-cuneiform.

At first, this kind of writing was a pictorial writing. Gradually, this kind of pictorial writing developed into Sumerian ideographic writing, which combined one or several symbols to express a new meaning. For example, "mouth" is the action "speaking"; Use symbols representing "eyes" and "water" to express "crying" and so on. With the popularization of characters, Sumerians simply use a symbol to represent a sound. For example, "arrow" and "life" are the same in Sumerian, so they use the same symbol "arrow" to represent it. Later, some restrictive radical symbols were added, such as adding an "inverted triangle" before a person's name to indicate that it is a man's name. In this way, this writing system is basically completed.

Sumerians used reed poles, bone sticks and triangular wooden sticks as pens to write on clay tablets made of wet clay, and the fonts naturally formed cuneiform, so this kind of writing was called cuneiform writing.

In order to preserve clay tablets for a long time, it is necessary to dry them before firing. This kind of fired clay tablet document is not afraid of moth-eaten, nor will it rot, and can withstand fire. But the fly in the ointment is that the clay tablets are very heavy, each weighing about one kilogram, and it is difficult to move around every time you look at one. Up to now, nearly one million clay tablets have been unearthed, the largest of which is 2.7 meters long and 1.95 meters wide, which is a giant book!

Cuneiform writing is the original creation of Sumerian civilization, which can best reflect the characteristics of Sumerian civilization. Cuneiform writing has had an important influence on the formation and development of many national languages in West Asia. Babylonia, Assyria, Hittites, Syria and other West Asian countries have slightly modified cuneiform as their own writing tools. Even the letters created by Phoenicians contained cuneiform elements. Cuneiform writing is the earliest writing in the world. However, due to its extreme complexity, it completely disappeared in 1 century.

In ancient Sumer, it was often seen that someone wrote on the clay tablet with a triangular stylus made of reeds or wooden sticks. This kind of character is written horizontally from left to right, and each stroke is always from thick to thin, like a wooden wedge. This is one of the three precious gifts that Sumerians left to later western civilization.

Sumerian characters were formed step by step. As we know now, Sumerian characters took 65,438+0,000 years to form. Around 3500 BC, Sumerians began to carve images on stones or clay as a sign of owning something: either a stone represents a "stone heart" or a tree represents a house.

About 500 years later, the evolution speed from graphics to characters has been greatly accelerated. At that time, the managers of Sumerian temple combined many standardized sketches to save the temple's property files and business transaction files.

Although there are hieroglyphics in this period, it has gone beyond the stage of expressing people and concrete things with pictures, and developed into expressing abstract things with pictures, such as a bowl representing food and a bowl on a person's head representing eating.

After another 500 years, mature characters completely replaced the old characters, because by then the original pictures had become so systematic that people no longer regarded them as pictures, but as pure symbols; Many of these symbols no longer represent specific words, but become syllable symbols which can be combined with other similar symbols to form words.

Around 2500 BC, this writing system in Sumer reached a stage of complete development. There are about 500 kinds of cuneiform symbols, many of which have multiple meanings, which makes cuneiform writing system more difficult to master than later pinyin writing system. Nevertheless, cuneiform has been the only writing system in Mesopotamia for two thousand years; By about 500 BC, this kind of writing had even become a common commercial communication medium in most parts of West Asia.

Cuneiform documents that survived Sumerian times and were excavated in modern times were copied on clay tablets. About 90% of these clay tablets are commercial and administrative records, and the remaining 65,438+00% are the remnants of dialogues, proverbs, hymns and myths and legends.

The Sumerian dialogue took the form of two characters standing on opposite sides of the debate, arguing with each other-summer versus winter, axe versus plow, or farmer versus shepherd. Because both sides have many bases to stand on, the debate usually doesn't win or lose. On the other hand, Sumerian proverbs handed down to this day provide a clear point of view.

A charming Sumerian proverb goes like this: "Where servants stay, there will be quarrels;" Where the barber stays, there is slander. "

Cuneiform characters spread to many places in West Asia, bringing the "fire" of civilization to mankind. In 2007 BC, after the decline of the last Sumerian dynasty, the Kingdom of Babylon inherited this legacy and made new progress.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions reference:

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Oracle Bone Inscriptions is one of the Chinese characters, and it is also the oldest mature character in China. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is also called Wen Qi, tortoise shell or tortoise shell animal bone. After divination with tortoise shell and animal bones, Shang people used knives to engrave the divination time, the names of the diviners and the things they divined, and some even engraved the good and bad luck that came true a few days later. However, the specific situation varies with the stage of Oracle bones. Generally speaking, the inscriptions in Wuding period are the most complete and the most abundant in existence. Scholars call this kind of record Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and this kind of writing is Oracle Bone Inscriptions. A large number of Oracle bones with Oracle Bone Inscriptions were unearthed in Yin Ruins, all of which have the basic structure of Chinese characters. A large number of Oracle Bone Inscriptions and inscriptions not only recorded the political, economic, military, meteorological and divination situation at that time, but also marked the maturity of the writing. The picture shows Oracle Bone Inscriptions carved on the tortoise shell.

introduce

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is mainly found in Yin Ruins in Anyang, Henan Province. Up to now, there are about 654.38+054,000 written Oracle bones unearthed. Among them, there are more than 97,600 pieces in Chinese mainland, more than 30,200 pieces in Taiwan Province Province, 89 pieces in Hong Kong, and more than 26,700 pieces have been scattered overseas to Japan, the United States, Britain, Canada, France, the former Soviet Union, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and other countries 12 due to war and commercial factors. Among them, when the Japanese invaded China, they systematically excavated in Yin Ruins, so they collected the most, with more than 12000 pieces. At present, more than 500 scholars in the world specialize in Oracle Bone Inscriptions and have published more than 2,000 monographs.

Shang and Zhou Dynasties were very superstitious. Kings in Shang and Zhou Dynasties often used Oracle Bone Inscriptions to predict good or bad luck, and engraved the things, time and results of divination on it, so Oracle Bone Inscriptions was also called Oracle bones. It covers politics, economy, military affairs, climate, culture and many other aspects, and is an important material for studying the history at that time.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions has about 4,500 words, about one third of which have been interpreted. According to research, pictographic characters, demonstrative characters, knowing characters and pictophonetic characters are used in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. In the application of word meaning, we can clearly see the method of metonymy. Pictophonetic characters account for about 25%. Today, pictophonetic characters account for about 90%.

Harmony in Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a symbol of the maturity of Chinese characters. Like cuneiform and hieroglyphics, it belongs to ideograph, and it is also the predecessor of the only ideograph used in the world at present. Its writing materials are generally tortoise bones, shoulder blades of cattle, and can also be engraved on walls, wood products, stone tools and so on. , with a knife, Zhu Shu, Mo Shu. China existed for a long time in ancient times. In the late Spring and Autumn Period, Chinese characters were separated from Oracle Bone Inscriptions and gradually lost their recognition, but they were generally sold to drug dealers as "keels" for medicinal purposes. It was not until 1899 (twenty-five years of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty) that it was accidentally discovered by epigraphist Wang and verified as a relic of Shang and Zhou Dynasties.

In the early years of the Republic of China, the collected Oracle Bone Inscriptions was divided into five periods: Wuding era in Pan Geng, Zujia era in Zu Geng, Bingxin Kangding era, Wuyi Wen Ding era and the first emperor Di Xin era. After studying Oracle bone inscriptions, Guo Moruo thinks that Oracle bone inscriptions need at least 1500 years from the initial stage to maturity.

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Oracle Bone Inscriptions, mainly referring to Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin Ruins, is a script carved (or written) by the royal family on tortoise shells and animal bones for divination in the late Shang Dynasty (14 ~1century). It is the earliest and most complete ancient Chinese character discovered by China.

In the 25th year of Guangxu reign in Qing Dynasty (1899), Oracle Bone Inscriptions was first known by epigraphist Wang and bought at a high price. In the following ten years, Wang Xiang, Meng, Liu E, Luo Zhenyu, and Farlian of the United States successively searched for Oracle bones, Shouling and the United Kingdom, Taifu Lin of Japan, and Canadian ones. , * * * got tens of thousands of pieces of Oracle bones. From 1928 to 1937, the archaeological team of the Institute of History and Linguistics of Academia Sinica conducted 15 planned excavations of Yin Ruins, and obtained about 25,000 pieces of Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Since then, Oracle bones have been unearthed in Yin Ruins. 1973, the Institute of Archaeology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences excavated more than 4,000 pieces of Oracle bones in Xiaotun South, Anyang, Henan. In addition to the Yin Ruins, two inscribed Oracle Bone Inscriptions pieces were also found in Zhengzhou 1953 and 1954 sites in the middle of Shang Dynasty. /kloc-since 0/954, about 300 inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells have been unearthed in Hongdong, Shaanxi, Changping, Zhouyuan Fenghao Site and Feng Chu, Qishan, Shaanxi.

Since the first discovery of Oracle bones, Chinese mainland, Taiwan Province Province, Hong Kong and Macao, Japan, the United States, Britain, Canada, France, the Soviet Union, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and other countries have unearthed150,000 pieces of Oracle bones, and South Korea also has collections.

Most of the unearthed Oracle bone inscriptions have been recorded and published, such as Liu E's Tieyun Hiding a Turtle, Luo Zhenyu's Yinxu Shuqi and Yinxu Shuqi Later Edition, James Mellon Menzies's Yinxu Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Lin Taifu's Tortoise and Beast Bone Essays, and Wang Xiang's Essays on Stan Yin Qi. Later, there were Dong Zuobin's A Collection of Yin Ruins and A Collection of Yin Ruins, and Hu Houxuan's A Collection of Newly Acquired Oracle Bones in Nanjing and Shanghai after World War II. After World War II, there were records of Oracle bones seen in the north and south, and Oracle bones were newly acquired in Beijing and Tianjin after World War II. The Collection of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, edited by Guo Moruo and Hu Houxuan, systematically and scientifically sorted out hundreds of thousands of pieces of Oracle bones found in Oracle Bone Inscriptions in recent 80 years, collected all the unearthed Oracle bones extensively and classified them by stages. * * * collected about 40,000 pieces of Oracle bones and compiled them into thirteen volumes, which provided systematic data for the study of Oracle bones and Shang history. In addition, 1973 Oracle bones unearthed in xiaotun south have been included in the book xiaotun south Oracle bones. Oracle bones in Japan, Canada, the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union, Germany and other countries have also been recorded and published respectively.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a relatively mature character, and the main methods of word formation are pictographic characters, pictographic characters and phonetic characters. Today's Chinese characters are still pictographs based on pictographs, so Oracle Bone Inscriptions has the basic form of Chinese character structure in later generations. Grammatically, there are nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and their sentence patterns and structural order are basically consistent with later grammars.

Because Shang Wang knew everything, Oracle Bone Inscriptions's content involved all fields of Shang society. According to the information about the business class and country in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, slaves and civilians in Shang Dynasty were composed of people with different identities, such as the masses, farmers, Qiang people, servants, Xi people and concubines. Slave owners and nobles include former governors and their spouses, such as Yan, Mu, Zi Ruzi and Tuzi. Officials at all levels include ministers, Yin, Shi and dogs. The army has divisions, brigades, etc. Penalties include beheading, beheading and setting up a prison. Oracle Bone Inscriptions also recorded the human sacrifice in Shang Dynasty, which is directly related to solving the social nature of Shang Dynasty. The Shang Dynasty often waged wars with foreign countries, and the conquered countries paid tribute to the Shang Dynasty. In Oracle bone inscriptions, it is often recorded that families have come and entered horses, cattle, sheep and turtles.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions was a rich social means of production in Shang Dynasty. In agriculture, there are records of plowing and ploughing fields, as well as the names of various crops such as millet, millet, wheat, thunder and rice. The king is concerned about the abundance and regret of agricultural harvest, reducing the impact on agricultural harvest, and often makes predictions of setting up millet, saving millet, praying for the new year and telling autumn. Horses, cattle, sheep, chickens, dogs and tapirs in animal husbandry. They are all recorded, and there are a large number of livestock and special stables. A large number of cattle and sheep are often used for sacrifice. Fishing and hunting still played a certain role in the social life of Shang Dynasty. The prey recorded in Oracle Bone Inscriptions include deer, elk, tapir, elephant, tiger, fox, fish and various birds. Hunting methods include wild, hunting, chasing, trapping and shooting. There are also commercial and transportation information about shellfish, friends, nobles, ships, cars and even transportation systems in Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions also enriched the ideological and cultural content of Shang Dynasty. In the astronomical calendar, there are solar eclipses, lunar eclipses, birds and stars, new stars and big stars. , and leap month data such as March and Shi Shuo at different time periods every day. In meteorology, there are many records about rain forecast, wind forecast, changing sun, clouds, thunder, hail, snow and rainbow. There are medical records of head diseases, dental diseases, nasal diseases, speech diseases, elbow diseases, foot diseases, heel diseases and other diseases, and there are also records about fertility, which shows that the expected date of delivery can be accurately inferred at that time.

The king is still a ghost, who can predict everything. The content of divination is mostly centered on the king. On the issues of concern, such as offering sacrifices to ancestors and natural gods, paying attention to wind, rain, water, celestial phenomena, farming, years of success, etc., virgins ask God, ghosts and gods, the first male and the first king, etc. , so as to predict good or bad luck, pray for blessing. The divination materials are mostly tortoise shell (and a small amount of back shell) and cattle scapula, which are corrected before use and drilled on the back (and a small amount of cattle scapula on the front). In divination, Oracle bones are burned with fire before drilling holes in the back, and a "divination"-shaped crack appears in the front, so as to determine good or bad luck. After divination, record the divination on the Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions usually carved vertical paintings first, then horizontal paintings, then signs, auspicious words and characters, and then divination, so he was also called Oracle Bone Inscriptions. A complete Oracle Bone Inscriptions should include narrative, fate, occupation and proof, while most Oracle bones often omit occupation or proof. In Oracle Bone Inscriptions, some draw sand or ink, some write on Oracle Bone Inscriptions with a brush, and some write first and then engrave.

The distribution of Oracle Bone Inscriptions is regular. Generally speaking, the words engraved with welcome omens are related to some omens. On the right side of tortoise shell, the omen is left and the text is right; On the left, the omen is right and the text is left; The Oracle Bone Inscriptions at the bridge head, tail and side are all from the outside to the inside. In Shang Dynasty, divination was often questioned from both positive and negative aspects, which reflected that there were corresponding "left and right chastity" on the tortoise shell of cattle scapula, with the right scapula divining on the right and Oracle Bone Inscriptions on the left; The left scapula is the opposite. Only two Oracle Bone Inscriptions near the upper bone mortar read from the middle, left and right, left and right. Oracle Bone Inscriptions on Oracle bones is carved from bottom to top, or from top to bottom. There is often a boundary between them, and everything is repeated. However, there are also different hexagrams staggered, which are "alternate inscriptions"; There is no room for Oracle Bone Inscriptions on the front, but the back is carved, which is a "positive and negative connection"; Some people ask the same thing over and over again, but the Oracle bones with basically the same content are engraved on several versions of Oracle bones, but the order of each version is different, which is called "the same Oracle bone".

In the late Shang Dynasty, Pan Geng moved its capital to Zhou Wang, which lasted about 273 years and experienced eight emperors and twelve kings. Oracle Bone Inscriptions in this period should also be divided into early and late periods. There are many methods to study Oracle bones in Shang Dynasty. At present, Dong Zuobin's five-stage theory based on ten criteria such as lineage, appellation and chastity is mainly adopted, namely, the first stage: Pan Geng, Xiao Xin, Xiao Yi and Wu Ding; The second stage: Zu Geng and Zujia; The third issue: Yan Xin and Kangding; The fourth period: martial arts, Wen Ding; The fifth issue: the first issue and Di Xin. Some of these issues are still under discussion.

1904, Sun Yirang wrote The Example of Wen Qi, which is the first book to research Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Since then, scholars have adopted the method of "tracing back to the ancient characters of Xu Shu and getting a glimpse of Oracle Bone Inscriptions from the ancient characters", made a comparative analysis of the radical stippling of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and used phonology and exegetics to interpret the characters. Among them, scholars and major works that have made great achievements include: Textual Research on Calligraphy in Yin Ruins by Luo Zhenyu, Notes on Characters in Yin Ruins by Tang Lan, Introduction to Ancient Chinese Characters, Nai Lin Wenjia's Theory by Yang Shuda, Wen Jia's Theory by Wiki, Oracle Bone Inscriptions's Textual Research by Guo Moruo, Compilation and Research of Oracle Bone Inscriptions by Nazi Party in Yin Qi, Oracle Bone Inscriptions by Yu Wusheng, etc. Since 19 17 Wang Guowei used Oracle Bone Inscriptions to study the history of Shang Dynasty, Guo Moruo, Dong Zuobin and Hu Houxuan have written Studies of Ancient Society in China, Yin Lipu and Series of History of Shang Dynasty in Oracle Bone Inscriptions respectively. Chen's Summary of Oracle Inscriptions in Yin Ruins also contains a lot of content about the study of Shang history. In recent years, many young scholars have also made valuable contributions to the study of business history by using Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Great progress has been made in the study of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, but there are still many problems to be discussed, such as textual research, dating by stages, Shang society, slave status and many problems in Shang history. In addition, the study of Oracle bones in the Western Zhou Dynasty is still in the primary stage, and there are still many controversies. These are all topics that need to be further studied and solved.

The evolution of Oracle Bone Inscriptions's glyphs: Oracle Bone Inscriptions is formed by the mutual development of engraving and calligraphy, and generally speaking, it develops from engraving to calligraphy. According to the divination in Yin Dynasty, Dong Zuobin divided the Zhen divination crowd into five periods. Taking the changes of Oracle bone inscriptions, calligraphy style and ancient times as examples, this paper expounds its glyph. From the first period to the fifth period, Oracle Bone Inscriptions's writing styles are different and have their own characteristics. The calligraphy style in the first period (Wuding period) was the most magnificent, and the large Oracle bones were the representative works. This large font is often very strong, the carved strokes are very thick, and it is full of Zhu Mo (cinnabar, ink). There are also neat and beautiful fine print, all of which are extremely wonderful. All these have the demeanor of Wu Ding, the Chinese star and the British king, and their boldness of vision and skill are quite amazing. His calligraphers are Wei, Yong and Bin. The second period (Zujia, Zu Geng era) had a more sincere style. Zujia and Zu Geng were the sages who inherited the first phase of Wu Ding, so the soothsayers at that time strictly followed the rules and did not change much. His calligraphers have travel, greatness and travel, namely. In the third stage (Yan Xin and Geng Ding), the calligraphy style changed and declined. The old calligraphers died in the early stage, and the bold calligraphy style swept the floor. At present, calligraphers are naive and weak, and even make many clerical mistakes. None of the authors of this issue have signed their names. In the fourth period (Wuyi and Wen Ding), the names of people who didn't sign books were engraved on Oracle Bone Inscriptions. During this period, the new calligraphers in Wuyi and Wen Ding era made great efforts to make their works vivid and unrestrained. Only one calligrapher, De, was found in this issue, but none was found. In the fifth period (first, Di Xin era), except for a few inscriptions with animal heads, the rest were extremely serious and neat. The reason is: Wang Yi is determined to start work. Oracle Bone Inscriptions's paragraphs, lines and characters are even, such as small letters. His writing style has changed and he has made a new one. His calligraphers are Swimming and Yellow.