Oracle Bone Inscriptions's Literary Significance

The earliest source of China's prose can be traced back to Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Yin people used tortoise shells and animal bones for divination. After divination, they carved the date of divination, the account of the fortune teller, and some of them also included the performance of good or bad luck in the future, which is called Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Oracle bone inscriptions were discovered in Anyang, Henan Province in the late Qing Dynasty. It is a relic of Shang King Pan Geng who moved to Yin and died in Yin. It has been more than 3000 years. The contents recorded in these Oracle Bone Inscriptions books are quite rich, including sacrifices, agricultural production, hunting, storms, wars, diseases and many other aspects, which truly and simply reflect all aspects of social life in the Yin and Shang Dynasties. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is relatively simple and unsystematic, but it has not been processed by later generations, and has maintained the original appearance of the Shang Dynasty. These divination characters, short only a few words, long more than one hundred words, relatively complete, such as:

I have made a prediction that my shell is destroyed. I lost the game at the end of ten days. Wang said, (yes) (special), it (yes) comes (difficult). On the fifth day of gas (reaching), Ding You promised (having) to (being difficult) from the west. Guan Gao said, "The earth is in the east of my city. (Miyaguchi) also smashed the field to the west of me. " (Guo Moruo's Oracle Bone Inscriptions, article 5 12).

This Oracle Bone Inscriptions is complete in time, place, people and things, and it is described in detail with some narrative elements. These Oracle Bone Inscriptions can be regarded as the seeds of narrative prose in the pre-Qin period.