At the beginning of the TV series "Fengshen Yanyi" (Fengshen List).
There is such an impressive picture
Emperor Xin of the Shang Dynasty and the Zhenren divination of the fortunes of the country
The method used is "drilling the tortoise shell and burning the trillion pattern"
This is basically in line with the mainstream research views of the current "Oracle" research
Ask Bu Oracle
During the Yin Shang period, people believed in ghosts and gods, liked to use turtle armor or animal bones to divinate auspiciousness, and after divination, they often engraved the time of divination, the surname of the bu person, the divination matters, whether it was fulfilled or not, etc. on the oracle bone, called the oracle bone, also known as the deed or the word.
Taking Yin Xu's turtle armor Zhenbu as an example, it is roughly as follows: kill the turtle to take the abdominal carapace part for preliminary rectification, sawing, trimming, and polishing. Several drills were performed on the back of the treated tortoise belly carapace. Chiseling is a slightly oval, date-core-shaped groove formed by tools, and drilling is a circular groove formed with tools on the side. Drilling is generally bounded by the middle seam (thousand mile road) of the turtle's abdomen carapace, the left half is drilled on the right side of the chisel, and the right half is drilled on the left side of the chisel, and the left and right are symmetrical. During divination, a groove in the back of the turtle's belly carapace is drilled to burn with fire, that is, "burning omen" and "burning turtle". Because the armor at the drill is already very thin, once it is cauterized at high temperature, a "Bu" shaped crack appears in the front corresponding place, that is, a "mega stripe".
The mega stripe is divided into two parts: longitudinal "ink" (also known as "Zhaoguang", "Zhaogan") and horizontal "Zhao" (also known as "Zhaotuo" and "Zhaozhi"), you can see that the longitudinal Megak is corresponding to the chisel on the back, and the transverse Megafection corresponds to the drill on the back, so the direction of the Mega-Stem is also symmetrical to the left and right of the "Thousand Mile Road" as the centerline. At that time, people believed that these burned cracks on the front of the tortoiseshell in the divination ceremony directly indicated the auspiciousness, and finally judged whether the occupied thing was auspicious or fierce according to the various forms presented by the crack, and inscribed a record on the tortoiseshell.
If animal bones are used for divination, it is generally taken from the shoulder blades of cattle and other animals for rectification, drilling, burning, and engraving. These divinations use the inscription on the bones of tortoise shells, which are called "oracle bones" in later generations.
Archaeological finds
At present, the academic community basically agrees that Wang Yirong, an official and epigrapher at the end of the Qing Dynasty, was the earliest discoverer of oracle bones. There are different stories about the specific discovery process.
One of the widely circulated stories is that in the twenty-fifth year of Guangxu, Wang Yirong fell ill and took medicine, and accidentally found ancient characters on the keel in Chinese medicine. Wang Yirong was a Hanlin in the late Qing Dynasty, born as a scholar, and had a profound attainment in epigraphy. After obtaining the oracle bone, he immediately determined that the writing on it was a relic of The Yin merchants that was older than the Zhenwen (Zhou Dynasty), and began to buy the oracle bone with characters at great expense. However, Wang Yirong had not yet conducted an in-depth study of this script, that is, he committed suicide and martyrdom when the Eight-Power Coalition army captured Beijing in July of the same year.
From the autumn of 1928 to the summer of 1937, due to the clarification of the location of the excavation of oracle bones, when the Anti-Japanese War broke out, the archaeological team of the Institute of History and Linguistics of the Academia Sinica, under the auspices of the famous archaeologists Dong Zuobin, Li Ji, Liang Siyong and others, carried out 15 archaeological excavations in the area of Xiaotun Village for 10 years, not only found a total of more than 24,900 pieces of oracle bones, but also discovered the palaces, temple ruins and wangling areas of the late Shang Dynasty, and unearthed a large number of precious bronzes, jades and pottery. Materially, it provides evidence that Yin Ruins was the capital of the Shang Dynasty. Yin Ruins has become a world-famous ancient cultural site, which has once again shaken the Chinese and foreign academic circles.
△ In the late Shang Dynasty, yin ruins were excavated in Anyang City, Henan Province, 13.5 cm long and 4.5 cm wide. The material of the ox ribs, the back is chiseled, burned, and the front is engraved with a divination record of the virgin. The content of the divination is: On the day of the Xin Unitary in April, the Zhenren rebuked the Zhen people in Fu □ and Fu Zhao, respectively, and the king held the Nian Sacrifice and the Yu Sacrifice, whether there was any disaster.
Up to now, more than 150,000 oracle bones and nearly 5,000 words have been unearthed. The content recorded in these oracle bones is extremely rich, involving many aspects of social life in the Shang Dynasty, including not only politics, military, culture, social customs, etc., but also involving science and technology such as astronomy, calendar, medicine and so on. Judging from the single characters that have been interpreted in the oracle bone, it already has the method of "pictograms, meanings, shapes, sounds, pointing things, transfer notes, and false borrowing", showing the unique charm of Chinese characters.
The literary style is booming and falling
The Shang Dynasty calligraphy is engraved in a thin and sharp style, with the interest of a blade. Influenced by the rise and fall of literary style, according to Dong Zuobin's view based on ten criteria such as lineage, title, and virginity, the period of about 273 years from Pan Geng to Shang in the late Shang Dynasty can be roughly divided into five periods.
Among them, the majestic period is About 100 years of Pan Geng, Xiao Xin, Xiao Yi, and Wu Ding, during which due to the influence of the prosperity of Wu Ding, the calligraphy style is magnificent and majestic, which is the ultimate of oracle bone calligraphy, in general, the pen is round, the pen is pointed, and the curves are wrong, rich in changes, whether fat or thin, they are extremely majestic.
In the "Special Exhibition of Non-Paper Book Cultural Relics", a beautiful engraved bone from this period is exhibited.
This piece of cattle bone fragment in the collection of the Nanjing Museum has inscriptions on the bone surface. Bu Ci recounted the fact that the woman presided over the ceremony of the fertility god. To the effect: Ding Wei divination on this day, the zhenren asked, should the woman preside over the divine ceremony? The time is in October.
She was one of the three legal spouses of King Wuding of the Shang Dynasty and an important military general of the Shang Dynasty. Judging from the surviving records of the Bu ci, Nühao was an important figure in the late Shang Dynasty, often presiding over important sacrifices, and led the army to conquest many times, making great contributions to the opening up of the Territory of the Shang Dynasty. Bu Cishu is majestic and magnificent, the pen is sharp, the inscription is calm and refined, and the chapters are neat and tidy without losing the beauty of Lang Qiyi, which is a superior product in the Shang King Wuding period.
There is also a piece of inscription in the exhibition of the bones of the divination prayer for rain content, respectively, Ding Weibu and Have you Bu two paragraphs of content, the two paragraphs of the content of the different virgins, the style of the book is also very different. Ding Weibu is a paragraph, the chapter is scattered and sparse, the handwriting is slender and tight; the unitary Bu section, the composition is tighter, and the handwriting is slightly thicker. On the same piece of bones, two sages coexist with different styles of divination for the same thing, and the two styles of writing shine together, which is quite rare.
In addition to the style of writing, in recent years, oracle bone inscriptions have also emerged in the study of inscription examples, text research, vocabulary research, grammar research and historical research, and have successively formed a relatively systematic oracle bone research results.
The Yin people regard divination as a very sacred activity, they frequently divinate, and reverently engrave the results of divination on the oracle bones, and then respectfully collect these oracle bone pieces with the will of the ghost god, invisibly leaving a precious cultural heritage for people more than 3,000 years later, and becoming a rare important material for studying the history of Yin Shang.
References: "Anyang Yin Ruins Found "Yi Gua" Bu Jia", "Shang Dynasty Bu Jia Man Scratch Supplement", "Yin Xu Garden Zhuang Dongdi Oracle Bone Inscription Language and Writing Comprehensive Examination", "Zhihu", "Encyclopedia" and so on
The above content comes from the public number Nanjing Municipal Museum