The Evolution of Oracle Bone Inscriptions

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. The following is my compilation of the evolution of Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Welcome to reading.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the inscription on the tortoise shell. The earliest writing appeared in Shang Dynasty. Because these words are engraved on the tortoise shell, they are called Oracle Bone Inscriptions, also called Wen Qi. During the Yin and Shang Dynasties, people respected ghosts and gods and divined when things happened. They carved Oracle Bone Inscriptions on the plane of tortoise shells and animal bones, and painted it red for good luck and black for danger. These words are all carved with a knife. The big characters are about an inch square, and the small characters are like grains, simple or complicated, which are very delicate.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions's writing characteristics:

First, pictographs are strong, and pictographs and knowing words account for a large proportion. Knowing words mainly rely on the pattern combination between components to express their meaning. The concept of overweight is still relatively weak, such as: home, personality, knowledge of personality, there are pigs above the house, there are houses and animals, indicating family living;

Second, the writing has not been completely finalized;

The writing form is very free, with certificates and anti-books. Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the word "lodge", has a treasure cover on it to indicate the house, and there is a person lying on the mat below to indicate the meaning of sleeping and living at night. For the convenience of purchase, people and mats are erected.

What Oracle Bone Inscriptions recorded.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions covers all fields of Shang society. Archaeologists believe that this is because the Shang king in the Yin and Shang Dynasties knew almost everything. Some experts believe that Oracle Bone Inscriptions is not all a record of divination, but many records of the daily life of the royal family. Therefore, we can learn about the political, economic and social composition of Shang Dynasty from Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

From the perspective of class composition, there were slaves, civilians, slave owners, nobles and officials at all levels in the Yin and Shang Dynasties. Slaves and civilians include people with different identities, such as the masses, villagers, Qiang people, servants, Xi people and concubines. Slave owners and nobles have their predecessors, kings and their spouses and children, which are recorded in Oracle Bone Inscriptions as Gao Congmou, Congmou, Mu Mou and Zi Ruzi, Duo Zi and so on. Officials in the Yin and Shang Dynasties were ministers, Yin, Shi, dogs, Asians, horses, archers, Hou and Bo.

Yin Shang had a powerful army, including chariots, bows and arrows and bronze weapons. For example, many historical materials and legends believe that Shang Tang used horse-drawn carriages in summer. According to records, the Sikorso once defeated the ancient Egyptian pharaohs with similar horse-drawn chariots. The army consists of divisions, brigades, etc. , similar to the current organizational system.

According to historical documents and legends, Shang Tang has established perfect laws. Legends, historical records and other historical documents record that in the early days of Dajia's reign, he disobeyed Shang Tang's decree and was exiled to Shang Tang Mausoleum by Minister Yi Yin. Oracle Bone Inscriptions confirmed that the Shang Dynasty had very complete laws. According to the relevant records in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, there were prisons in Shang Dynasty, which were punished by gouging out and cutting. Mutual confirmation with historical documents.

The army is the cornerstone of the country. Because of its powerful army, the Shang Dynasty often waged wars abroad and constantly expanded its territory. As mentioned in the first chapter, the distribution of Erligang culture has expanded rapidly in a short period of time, which should be the continuous development and growth after the migration of Shang Dynasty to western Henan. According to the records of Yin Shang Dynasty, all conquered countries should pay tribute to Shang Dynasty. There are many similar records in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which record people visiting horses, cows, sheep and turtles. This point has continued in the history of our country. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Korea, Vietnam and other countries also paid tribute to the centralized emperor.

In Oracle Bone Inscriptions, there are also records of sacrificial ceremonies of Shang people, which have been confirmed by numerous archaeological excavations. For example, in 1950, the first tomb excavated in New China, Wuguan Village in Yin Ruins, found 79 martyrs and horses 16. According to statistics, there are more than 5,000 martyrs in more than a dozen tombs excavated in Yinxu, an officer village in Anyang. 1976, in a medium-sized tomb excavated in the northwest suburb of Anyang city, there were more than 1400 human sacrifice pits around the tomb. For another example, the martyrdom remains of 1997 and 13 in the late Shang Dynasty and a martyrdom dog were also found in the tomb of the eldest son's mouth excavated in Yin Xishan, Taiji Hall of Taiqing Palace in Luyi County, Henan Province. The heavy burial customs such as human and animal martyrdom are exactly the same as those in ancient Egypt, which seriously hindered the economic development of Shang Dynasty. It is worth noting that martyrs were also found in the ruins of Sumer in Mesopotamia.

As a farming society, Shang Dynasty paid great attention to the influence of agricultural harvest and wind and rain climate on agricultural production. Therefore, Oracle Bone Inscriptions is rich in agricultural production. Fields, crops, etc. It's all recorded It is particularly noteworthy that in the records of crops, besides millet, millet and rice, wheat is also recorded.

At present, the archaeological community generally believes that the origin of wheat is in the fertile crescent of West Asia. Archaeologists were domesticated by wild Ermai about 1 ten thousand years ago. There is no wild Ermai in China, so the wheat must be foreign. At present, archaeological discoveries show that the earliest wheat in the Central Plains appeared in the Yin and Shang Dynasties. In other words, wheat must be foreign, appearing in the Shang Dynasty, just like bronzes and Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Yin Shang belongs to the agricultural society. During the Yin and Shang Dynasties, animal husbandry was quite developed, which was used in daily life, military affairs, sacrifices and human sacrifices. There are a large number of records of "six animals" kept in captivity in Oracle Bone Inscriptions: horses, cows, sheep, pigs, dogs, chickens and other livestock and poultry, which shows that in the Shang Dynasty, our ancestors were no longer nomads, but were very good at animal husbandry. This is consistent with the records in historical documents. For example, it is said that Xiangtu rides a horse and Wang Hai serves a cow. Domesticate cattle and horses as means of transportation. In addition, the ancestors of the Shang Dynasty attached great importance to sacrifice and often used a large number of cattle and sheep. According to legend, Shang Tang once gave a large number of livestock to Borg, a vassal state of Xia Dynasty, for sacrifice. It shows that the productivity of Shang Dynasty had reached a fairly high level at that time. Guo Moruo once expressed his feelings in the book "Research on Ancient China Society" published in 1930: At that time, the animal husbandry in Shang Dynasty developed to a staggering degree, and all six animals made sacrifices, and 300-400 at a time was only useful.

It is worth pointing out that the original meaning of "sacrifice" in our modern Chinese comes from sacrifice. Among them, "sacrifice" is to sacrifice a whole large animal with pure color hair, such as cattle and sheep; "Sacrifice" is to sacrifice the whole animal with a group of pure color fur. Similar to Shang Dynasty, the sacrifices in ancient Egypt were animals with solid fur.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions's records also show that fishing and hunting were also important production activities in Shang Dynasty. Oracle Bone Inscriptions recorded deer, elk, tapir, elephant, tiger, fox, fish and all kinds of birds, indicating that there should be elephants near Henan in Shang Dynasty. During the Yin and Shang Dynasties, there were various hunting methods, such as field hunting, hunting, chasing, trapping and shooting. Among them, hunting was a very important activity in Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and its purpose was: to kill pests and protect crops from animals; Offering sacrifices to the ancestral temple; Driving horses, bows, riding, shooting, mobilizing the masses, military training. It is said that there are also regulations in Shang Tang, where hunting is inconsistent and there is room for it, so you can't catch them all.

Babe and Malay turtle

Shang Dynasty's commerce was very developed, and there were records about Bei, Peng and Jue in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Among the cultural relics unearthed in the Shang Dynasty, the important currency is cargo shellfish, a precious shellfish that grows in tropical Pacific waters. 6800 northern coins unearthed from Fu Hao's tomb in Yin Ruins. Later, fewer and fewer coins were unearthed, and stone shells, clam shells, bone shells and copper shells began to appear, indicating that the Shang Dynasty gradually lost the supply source of coins. The copper shell is the earliest metal currency in the history of China. One possibility is that in the early Shang dynasty, there was trade with the residents of tropical ocean islands. Another possibility is that our ancestors of the Shang Dynasty once lived in the tropics and accumulated a large number of northern noses. After coming to the Central Plains, we lost the supply of Beibi, so we gradually made substitutes.

The first possibility is relatively small: Beibi was unearthed in Erligang period, which was very weak in Shang Dynasty and located in inland areas. If Beibi was acquired through trade with tropical islands, why did Beibi become less in the process of commercial development?

The second possibility is confirmed by Oracle Bone Inscriptions's written material Tortoise Shell. Many turtles in Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty were Malay turtles from the tropics. Archaeologists generally believe that the Malay tortoise shells in Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Yin and Shang Dynasties originated from Hainan Island of Shang Dynasty. However, Hainan Island was not the birthplace of Malay turtles in history, but Malay turtles were introduced as pets in recent years. More importantly, in the early Shang dynasty, its sphere of influence was limited to Zhengzhou, Henan Province, and it was not until its heyday that it crossed the Yangtze River. How to get a lot of tortoise shells from Hainan Island? Careful study shows that the Oracle bones in the early Yin and Shang dynasties were mainly the abdominal and dorsal shells of turtles. For example, in the pit YH 127 where Oracle bones were buried in Wuding era, among the more than 7000 Oracle bones/KLOC-0, only 8 ox bones were found, and the rest were tortoise shells. One of them is a big turtle from Malay Peninsula, which is 44 cm long and 35 cm wide. This is by far the biggest tortoise. However, in the later Oracle bone pits, the number of tortoise shells dropped sharply and became mainly bovine bones. For this phenomenon, some archaeologists speculate that Jia Bu and Oracle Bone Inscriptions were buried separately in the Yin Dynasty. Considering that the composition of Oracle Bone Inscriptions has changed with the times, Malay tortoise was brought by our ancestors in the tropical area of Shang Dynasty, which is more convincing.

In a word, the sudden appearance of Oracle bone inscriptions and the decreasing proportion of shellfish and Malay turtles in Oracle bones produced in tropical waters all support that our ancestors lived in tropical areas for a long time before they arrived in Henan.

My first belief is that Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty is a mature script (Figure 2). It takes thousands or even tens of thousands of years from appearance to development into such a mature figure. Therefore, the history of Chinese civilization before Shang Dynasty was very long. But later, some facts shook my belief: many characters were created in a short time, for example, Mongolian borrowed Uighur letters. According to legend, in 1204, Genghis Khan conquered Naiman, Naiman was arrested as an official, and Tattagong in Uighur still kept the national seal. Genghis Khan appreciated his loyalty, not only did he not kill him, but also appointed him to be in charge of printing Mongolian documents and ordered him to teach Mongolians to write Mongolian in Uighur letters. Later, about 400 years later, the Qing Taizu Nurhachi ordered Erdene and Gagai to create Manchu with reference to Mongolian characters. For another example, modern German scripts were translated into German by Martin Luther in 152 1 year, thus creating modern German with strict grammar. Russian characters are also said to have been created by two missionaries to promote the Bible more than 300 years ago.

Of course, these are all pinyin characters, and they are all letters of other languages. It is easy to create your own writing system through transformation. In contrast, Korean takes a long time because the letters are self-made. It is said that the Korean script is "the true voice of the people", which was created by "King Sejong" Li Mao on 1443 and ordered by Zheng Linzhi, Cui Heng, Park Pengnian, Shen and others. For more than 30 years.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions Unearthed from Yin Ruins

What shocked me most was the creation of Xixia Wen. As a hieroglyph, Xixia characters were created in only three years: Xixia Jing Zong Li Yuanhao spent three years, and ordered Minister Ye Liren Rong to create nearly 6,000 Chinese characters, which were quickly popularized. This may be because Xixia people are Tangut people and belong to a branch of Tibetan language. Linguistically, Xixia belongs to Sino-Tibetan language family. They have a natural adaptability to China's hieroglyphics.

Although Xixia script may be a special case, it has shaken the logical basis for me to infer China's long history with Oracle Bone Inscriptions. My belief that China is an "ancient civilization" began to waver, and sometimes I even felt inferior.

When Oracle bone inscriptions were discovered, western scholars thought that Oracle bone inscriptions came from ancient China or Babylon, which was strongly opposed by scholars. However, if there is no archaeological evidence to prove that there are ancient scripts in China today than in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, it cannot be ruled out that "Oracle Bone Inscriptions is foreign". Some people say that the early words may be written on something fragile, so they can't be seen. However, a large number of pottery were unearthed from early archaeological sites in China. Pottery is a kind of article that is easy to leave words, but so far, a large number of pottery before the Shang Dynasty have been found in China without a word. Is Oracle Bone Inscriptions really foreign? If it is foreign, did our ancestors bring characters from ancient Egypt, or did they learn them from ancient Egypt like Japan and South Korea borrowed Chinese characters?

Expansion: The Story of Oracle Bone Inscriptions's Past Life

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is also called "Wen Qi" and "Oracle Bone Inscriptions".

It mainly refers to the characters carved on tortoise shells or animal bones by the royal family in the late Shang Dynasty in China, and it is the earliest known systematic Shang writing carrier in China and East Asia.

Yesterday I answered the cuneiform created by the ancient Sumerians. Our Oracle Bone Inscriptions and cuneiform characters, including later ancient Egyptian characters and Mayan characters, belong to hieroglyphics. It should also be the derivative and continuation of cuneiform, and it is a sign that ancient people recorded major events.

Before Oracle Bone Inscriptions, our Xia Dynasty should also have its own symbols and characters, but these inferences need a series of evidence to prove before the rigorous scientific attitude of archaeology.

1. Why is Oracle Bone Inscriptions the most beautiful writing?

Oracle Bone Inscriptions, as its name implies, is the characters carved on tortoise shells and ox bones, and is an ancient symbol of China, also known as "Wen Qi", "Oracle Bone Inscriptions", "Yin Ruins" or "tortoise shells and animal bones".

Oracle Bone Inscriptions's Writing Method of Zodiac

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is an integral part of the 8,000-year history of civilization in China, and it is also one of the orthodox characters in China (rock wall figures, Wen Tao, pottery runes, pottery inscriptions, Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Oracle Bone Inscriptions, inscriptions, inscriptions, wooden slips, wooden slips, wooden slips, wooden slips and small seals, stone carvings, and Han Dynasty official scripts).

Oracle Bone Inscriptions's writing has the characteristics of symmetry and stability. It is the earliest mature Chinese character that can be seen in Chinese culture in the Central Plains. As far as word formation is concerned, Oracle Bone Inscriptions's appearance is mostly rectangular or several squares, which has the beauty of symmetry or variation of a word. Moreover, Oracle Bone Inscriptions also has the structural form of combining Fiona Fang and Kai Zi Ji, and some characters have more or less pictographic traces, which are naive and vivid in the initial development stage of characters.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions has a history of over 3000 years. It is not only the earliest and most systematic data for studying the origin of Chinese characters, but also an important wealth for studying oracle calligraphy. It conforms to the "six-character" principle of Chinese characters and has three basic elements of calligraphy, namely, pen, word formation and composition. The writing characteristics of Chinese characters are all embodied in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Judging from the pen, Oracle Bone Inscriptions used a knife to carve on the hard tortoise shell or animal bone, so he used a straight line when carving, and the curve was also carved with a short straight line. The stroke thickness is also uniform; Because the knife is straight up and down, most lines are slightly thick in the middle and slightly thin at both ends, thin and strong, straight and smooth, and full of three-dimensional sense.

Why is Oracle Bone Inscriptions one of the traditional Chinese characters? Because in terms of the number and structure of fonts, Oracle Bone Inscriptions has developed into a more rigorous and systematic writing, which is quite different from its earlier counterparts. Oracle bone inscriptions have systematically recorded major events and the process of divination, which can not be completed by symbols, but the traces of the original pictures and characters in Oracle bone inscriptions are still relatively naive, and the pictographic meaning is also obvious, with an ignorant and naive writing line. Because of this, Oracle Bone Inscriptions has another aesthetic feeling of returning to nature. The popularity of "oracle calligraphy" among some calligraphers and calligraphy lovers proves its charm.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions writes symmetry.

Second, Oracle Bone Inscriptions's discovery.

Speaking of which, there is really a legendary story.

Wang, born on the eighth day of June in the 25th year of Qing Daoguang, loved epigraphy. Grandfather Wang was edited by Jing Kui, Jill Jinshi and Hanlin Academy, and was once the governor of Shaanxi. His father, Wang Zuyuan, is a famous engraver and collector. He has served as the director of the Ministry of War, the magistrate of Chengdu, Sichuan, and Yuan Wailang, the provincial judge of Sichuan. When Oracle Bone Inscriptions was discovered, Wang was 55 years old. Before Wang discovered Oracle Bone Inscriptions, he had written more than 30 kinds of epigraphy works, such as Han Shi Cun Mu, Village Mu of Southern and Northern Dynasties, Fushan epigraphy, Gu Quan Jing Ji Ben, Shi Qu Wa Zhai and so on. He also discussed more than 500 letters about epigraphy with Weng Tonghe, Yu Sheng, Zhang Zhidong, Sun Yuwen and Liu E. At this time, Wang has served as imperial academy for three times, calling him "Imperial College".

In the 25th year of Guangxu (1899), the Chinese medicine recovered by his family from the pharmacy had a "keel" engraved with symbols and characters, which aroused Wang's interest. With the background of epigraphy and as an imperial scholar, he immediately linked this animal bone with the early civilization of Han culture, thinking that it was an ancient writing symbol, and classified this "keel" into two categories. Wang collected about 1500 pieces of animal bones with characters, and repeatedly scrutinized, sorted and assembled "keels". His profound knowledge of epigraphy made him quickly understand that these "keels" were tortoise shells and animal bones, and the symbols on them were carved with a knife, while the cracks were caused by high temperature burning. "After careful textual research, I realized that it was Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty, and his words were indeed before printing." Finally, Wang confirmed that the symbols carved on these Oracle bones are indeed a kind of characters, which were created by our ancestors in the early days, earlier than seal cutting, that is, the characters on bronzes in the pre-Qin period. This discovery surprised Wang and swept away the haze of illness in recent days. Tracing back to the source, it is proved that most of these Oracle bones came from Anyang, Henan Province, and were later named "Oracle Bone Inscriptions".

In the 26th year of Guangxu, Eight-Nation Alliance went to Beijing, and Wang was temporarily appointed as the ambassador to Beijing. At the time of crisis, he had to put down Oracle Bone Inscriptions, who was studying, and sighed, "Now I will die!"

In the afternoon, when the city was broken, he organized a group to "fight with the street and refuse to surrender", without the slightest fear, and finally lost. His wife Xie Yunhe and his daughter-in-law Zhang threw themselves into the well and died heroically.

Third, the inheritance of Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Xiaotun Village in the northwest of Anyang City is the location of the "Yin Ruins" in the late Shang Dynasty.

After Wang was martyred, his Oracle bones were scattered all over the country.

In order to pay off the old debts, his son sold the antiques hidden at home, and most of the Oracle bones were transferred to his good friend Liu E (that is, Liu Tieyun, the author of Travel Notes of Lao Can) 1902. In addition, Liu E bought more than 3,000 pieces of Oracle bones from an antique dealer in Liulichang, and received more than 300 pieces from his friend Fang Ruo. He also sent his son to Henan to buy more than 1000 pieces, and his collection of Oracle bones increased to more than 5,000 pieces, making him the most famous Oracle bone collector at that time. With the advice and help of his good friend Luo Zhenyu, Liu E printed the book "Tieyun Hidden Turtle" in June 5438 +0903 65438+ 10, and published the information of Oracle Bone Inscriptions for the first time. Today, I also sent this set of six volumes of "Tieyun Hidden Tortoise" to Xiling Publishing House for auction. They suggested that I didn't have a reserve price, indicating that the current market indifference has arrived.

The author's own collection of "Tieyun Tibetan Turtle" was sold at Xiling Netscape in May without reserve price.

This book uses 1058 pieces of Oracle bones collected by Liu E, which was selected and expanded by Luo Zhenyu himself. Among them, 5 were forged, 3 were dead weight, and 2 were inverted/kloc-0. There are 40 pieces with words on the back of Oracle bones and 4 pieces with words on mortar, but there are still defects. Soon, Sun Yirang, a scholar, wrote China's first monograph on Oracle Bone Inscriptions, The Case of Wen Qi, based on the data of "A Turtle Hidden in an Iron Cloud".

After Luo Zhenyu, many famous scholars, such as Wang Guowei, Guo Moruo, Dong Zuobin, Chen,,, Yu, Hu Houxuan, etc. , fruitful textual research and research, and formed a special knowledge-Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Luo Zhenyu (No. Tang Xue), Wang Guowei (no Guantang), Dong Zuobin (no.Tang Yan) and Guo Moruo (no.Tang Ding) are also called the "four halls of Oracle bones", among which Luo Zhenyu is the oldest and the earliest contact with Oracle bones, ranking first in the "four halls".

It was first discovered in Oracle Bone Inscriptions in 1899. According to the statistics of scholar Hu Houxuan, * * unearthed more than 54,600 pieces of Oracle bones/kloc-0, including more than 97,600 pieces in Chinese mainland, more than 30,200 pieces in Taiwan Province, 89 pieces in Hongkong and more than 27,900 pieces in China * *. In addition, Japanese.

Fourthly, the future development of Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions 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.