Oracle Heritage on the Memory of the World Register

The oracle bones were excavated from the site of Yin Ruins in Anyang, Henan Province, China, and belonged to the divination inscriptions and chronicles of the royal family and aristocratic groups in the capital of the Yin Shang Kings from the 14th century BC to the 11th century BC, and the carriers of the inscriptions were mainly ox shoulder blades and turtle shells, as well as the bones of other animals. The oracle bones, the dunhuang southern and northern dynasties to the Tang and Song dynasties on paper, the Western Han and Jin Dynasties, and the Qing cabinet Daku Ming and Qing archives, are hailed as the four new discoveries in China's modern academic history. Oracle bones are the earliest written classical documentary heritage in China, inheriting the true Chinese genes, which can be used to trace the unknown of China's ancient history, spy on the scenes of the social life of Yin Shang three thousand years ago, enhance historical credibility, enrich historical connotations, and extend the historical axis. The oracle bone is the originator of the endless Chinese characters and Chinese language, and it is also the most authentic material for finding the origin of Chinese thought, the origin of Chinese spirit, the source of Chinese faith, the origin of Traditional Chinese cultural characteristics and character, and the origin of Chinese artistic aesthetics.

According to the origin of Chinese civilization, the originator of Chinese characters is found

The oracle bone is one of the five major classical scripts in the development of human society in the world, which can be compared with the clay cuneiform script found in the two river basins of West Asia dating back about 5500 years, the ancient Egyptian inscription holy book script found at the mouth of the Nile River in North Africa 5000 years ago, the papyrus monk cursive script derived later, the ancient Indian seal script around 2000 BC, and the Mayan script invented by the American peoples in the early AD.

Oracle's application for the "Memory of the World Register" has been long awaited by the academic community. As early as August 2006, at the "International Academic Symposium celebrating the successful application of Yin Ruins and the 79th Anniversary of the Discovery of YH127 Pit" in Anyang, Henan Province, experts and scholars called on the state to approve projects and start Oracle's declaration as a world cultural heritage. On May 21, 2010, the Office of the National Center for the Protection of Ancient Books officially identified the State Archives Bureau as the centralized management unit for declaration, and launched the declaration procedure at an appropriate time. At the end of August of the same year, the Institute of History and Language in Taiwan also hosted the "Oracle and Cultural Memory Forum". The National Library of China has organized experts and scholars to study and apply for oracle bone inclusion in the "National Precious Ancient Books List" and the formulation and implementation of relevant standards. With the overall arrangement of the country's orderly submission, under the active promotion of the Ministry of Education and other relevant ministries and commissions, Oracle's application for the "Memory of the World List" was officially submitted in 2016, passed the final examination of UNESCO on October 30, 2017, and was successfully selected, and received the selection notice and relevant certificates on November 27.

The successful selection of 11 oracle bone collections such as the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the National Library, the Palace Museum, and the Nanjing Museum into the UNESCO "Memory of the World Register" truly confirms the world significance and international status of the oracle bone heritage, affirms the long-term influence of the oracle bone on the classical culture and social development of East Asia, and has an important role in promoting the protection and inheritance of the oracle bone, which actually means that all the oracle bones unearthed from the Yin ruins scattered at home and abroad should belong to the World Memory Heritage.

We already know that oracle bones are an important material for studying the original form of Chinese characters and the earliest forms of Chinese language grammar. There are about 4,000 single words in the oracle bone, of which about 1,300 are found in modern Chinese dictionaries, and the remaining more than 2,000 are mostly disappeared personal names, place names, and sacrificial names, but most of their part-of-speech meanings can be basically known according to the context of the text. Oracle bone language is the mother tongue of Chinese, there is a more standardized ideographic phonetic system inside, the shape of the sound character has accounted for more than 40%, has become an important source of Chinese Qin and Han after the Sino-Tibetan language system. Due to the discovery of the oracle bone, the original form of Chinese linguistics and the early characteristics of Chinese grammar have become difficult to explain and can be analyzed in detail. Oracle's literary style, there is a relatively sound and mature self-contained language, morphemes, vocabulary, syntax and grammar categories, and modern Chinese grammar constitute the same line, modern Chinese grammar of the word class, such as nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, numbers, quantifiers, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries, mood words, question words, etc., have been basically available in oracle bones.

Explore the rich historical materials of Yin Shang culture

The Oracle era belongs to the late Shang Kingdom, which lasted for 273 years when the Shang king Pan Geng moved from Yin to Emperor XinFan 8 and 12 kings for a total of 273 years, from the hands of special people of the Yin Shang Dynasty more than 3,000 years ago, including Shang kings, noblewomen, royal family members, officials, nobles, wizards of all sides, local dignitaries, etc. In the form of unique divination texts (commonly known as oracle bones) or in the form of chronicles (commonly known as chronicle inscriptions), these groups wrote and carved on the bones of tortoises and beasts with their way of thinking, behavior, and beliefs, wrote down the real genealogy of the Shang royal family, and recorded a large number of gods, the names of the first kings, the names of noble figures, the names of the princes, the chiefs of the tribal chiefs, the names of diplomatic envoys, and the myths and legends, revealing the characteristics of the succession to the throne and the marriage kinship system. The political landscape of the activities of kings and subordinates, the ideological and emotional expressions of the characters in major events, the relationship between the Shang king and the princely states, the bureaucracy and the office of the officials, the class structure of the magnates and the commoners and slaves in social life, the hierarchical relationship between the managers of the economic industry and the laborers of the handicraft industry, the religious consciousness concepts of different ethnic groups, the military attaches, army organizations, weapons and equipment, offensive and defensive actions in military wars, the identity, social status and relationship between the martyrs and the tomb owners in funeral sacrifices, The Shang Dynasty became an era of letter history with unearthed ancient texts, filling the gap in history books.

The geographical structure of the political territory of the Shang Kingdom and the corresponding internal and external service system recorded in the oracle bones can be used to understand the class stratification, political structure and state management form of the society at that time, the supreme ruler was the Shang King, and there was a group of internal service auxiliary officials under the Shang King, who led a large bureaucratic group to provide advice to the Shang King and be responsible for handling specific affairs. Among them, the Buguan group was responsible for providing the Shang King with a reference for decision-making on religious sacrifices, and using the power of the gods to influence the adjudication of political affairs. There are hundreds of local ethnic or grass-roots geopolitical organizations, and the patriarchs of each clan are responsible for the management of the most basic level. In terms of legal punishment, there is a set of "five punishments" system of ink, sword, blade, blade, and sting. There were as many as hundreds of Fang states around the Shang Dynasty, and the Fang Monarch was the main body of the Shang Dynasty's foreign officials, and some Fang States and the Shang Dynasty were enemies and friends, and there were many records of military conquests. The armed forces of the Shang Dynasty constituted a system, which was divided into three categories: the royal army, the army of the princely states, and the extraordinary "clan soldiers" of "the unity of soldiers and farmers".

The oracle bones contain many records of weather, frost, rain and snow, water and drought insect plagues, as well as meteor showers and five eclipses that occurred around 1200 BC, which are important materials for paleoclimate and paleo-astronomical research. There are also many records of wild flora and fauna and hunted elephants, which can be used to study the changes in the natural ecology and historical geography of the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. The oracle bone divides the year into spring and autumn, and implements a set of yin and yang calendars suitable for agricultural settlement life, such as December of the common year, thirteen months of leap years, and there are large and small months, such as the single month called "Xiao Yue" (Shandong Museum Collection 8.110.17), "Little January" ("Fu" 1), "Little March" ("Northeast Normal University" 13), "Little May" ("Collection" 21637), "Xiaosheng July" ("Collection" 7791), etc., which is the opposite of the current call of the occasional month as a small month. The leap month arrangement uses year-end or mid-year leap to regulate the relationship between the solar year and the synodic month. There are "dan", "big food", "daytime", "small food", "morning", "city day", "twilight", "dusk", "burning", "living", "dreaming" and other "unit words" that indicate different times of the day. From the oracle bones and combined with the archaeological findings of Yin Ruins, it is known that the types of grain crops at that time were millet, sorghum, millet, wheat, rice, soybeans and other so-called "six grains". In order to achieve a good harvest of crops, there are agricultural sacrifices such as offering wind and calming wind, stopping rain and resisting flooding, praying for rain and burning witches to resist drought, and calming locust plagues. At that time, the religious division of society was mainly divided into three major belief systems: the upper god, the middle heaven and earth ancestor god and the natural god, and the lowest ghost world. The ancestral sacrifices of the ancestors of the first kings and concubines are particularly solemn, and can be divided into four categories: special sacrifices, temporary sacrifices, joint sacrifices, and weekly sacrifices.

There are also a wide variety of architectural names in the oracle bone, the courtyard palace structure is integrated with residence, sacrifice and administration, and the palace and the pond garden complement each other, which has set a precedent for the palace and the royal garden in later generations. There are schools where young children called "right schools" and "universities" teach, which is the earliest source of traditional Chinese "learning in the official palace". The Oracle bone record has more than 20 kinds of musical instrument names, more than 10 different ritual song names, different forms of martial arts and literary dance names, musicians "Duowan" and many dancers' special division of labor, reflecting the developed state of instrumental music, music and dance at that time. There are also more than 50 kinds of patient records, such as modern medicine, which belong to internal medicine, surgery, stomatology, infectious diseases, etc., and have both treatment, drugs, acupuncture and so on. The earliest records of the plague in the oracle bones, such as "sick people", "first plague", and "disease year and death", reflect the group, seasonal and sudden characteristics of epidemic diseases at that time, and even have a certain degree of understanding of the occurrence, transmission and harm. There are also negative witchcraft actions such as "fighting the epidemic", "guarding the masses", beating up and expelling epidemic ghosts, and "ning disease" in order to eliminate the plague, and there are also rational and positive prevention and control methods such as isolation and epidemic prevention, prohibition of rumors, smoking and disinfection, drug medical prevention, diet and health care, sprinkling of living rooms, cleaning and sanitation, and even necessary punishment and punishment. At the time when the plague is rampant, people are not helpless, but through national administration, social group prevention, sports health care and other ways to resist the invasion of the disease, the formation of many social customs and customs to prevent the spread of the plague, the content of which involves environmental science, nutrition, pharmacology, health care, psychology, physical education and other aspects.

Oracle also provides a new world for the modern calligraphy art world to stretch talents, oracle bone body modeling and writing pen has a high starting point, compliance, with the appropriate calligraphy elements, the first sound is the source and the diversion of future generations of calligraphy art, its knife pen, knot body, chapter law three elements, showing the characteristics of precociousness, directly or indirectly affect the flow of late calligraphy, become the chinese calligraphy art of indiscriminate, reflecting the aesthetic principles and common psychology of the Chinese nation, that is, peaceful and stable aesthetics, strength and weakness balance, rhythmical psychological consciousness, It has had a profound impact on the development of Chinese society and Culture. When people are admiring the relics of cultural relics and chasing the charm of Yin Shang, they intend to conceive artistic ideas, and create a new category of modern calligraphy art in traditional calligraphy art forms such as truth, grass, seal, li and xing, and create a new category of modern calligraphy to add color and brilliance to the literary garden of the book world.

Oracle Heritage Research and Recommendations for Conservation Measures

Henan is the hometown of oracle bones, in addition to Anyang, in Zhengzhou, Luoyang and other places have been excavated, more should be done. In the past hundred years, Henan has produced many well-known scholars, laying the cornerstone of oracle osteology and Yinshang culture research. In the new era, the party and the state attach great importance to the exploration of ancient scripts and ancient civilizations such as oracle bones, and the relevant state departments have launched the "Ancient Script and Chinese Civilization Inheritance and Development Project", and Henan is also in the middle. Now that the general environment has such opportunities, Henan has unique conditions and advantages, and it is necessary to study and formulate an outline of the province's oracle and Yinshang culture research and the detailed rules for the implementation of supporting implementation, gather the professional strength of the province, and make this bigger and stronger. It is hoped that under the organization and planning of relevant departments, people, money and materials will be implemented to ensure the implementation of the plan; It is necessary to have long-term planning and short-term goals, and proceed in an orderly manner in a step-by-step manner.

It is necessary to attach importance to the holographic collation and research of oracle bones, "Qing Qing Jiadi", as far as Henan is concerned, the non-archaeological excavations hidden by the relevant units of the state are about 1500 pieces, and the thorough investigation of the folk collection cannot be ignored, there may be more than tens of thousands of pieces, which need policy support and guidance.

It is necessary to attach importance to and support the construction of an authoritative, grounded, and sustainable development of Oracle's big data information processing and sharing platform supported by computer professional technology, but it is necessary to save financial resources and avoid duplicate construction. The long-term engineering project "YinQi Wenyuan", which is run by the Key Laboratory of Oracle Information Processing of the Ministry of Education of Anyang Normal University, is the oracle big data platform of today's true public welfare service, which has been built for many years and has a certain influence in the academic community.

It is necessary to attach importance to the innovation of the evaluation system of "no study" and "unpopular" disciplines, which is conducive to the cultivation and rational use of professional talents. The study of ancient scripts such as oracle bones is slow work, and the research of some large-scale and engineering projects requires long-term focus, and it is not possible to pursue the output of "short and fast", otherwise it is difficult to produce academic excellence, and it is difficult to cultivate and absorb high-level and dedicated scholars. Under the new situation, it is necessary to attach importance to solving some practical problems that currently exist, and establish a positive and reasonable academic evaluation mechanism conducive to the development of unpopular disciplines.

(The author Song Zhenhao is a collaborative research and innovation platform for "Ancient Characters and the Inheritance and Development Project of Chinese Civilization", chief expert of oracle bone science of the Research Center of Chinese Character Civilization of Zhengzhou University, and member of the Faculty of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

Source: Henan Daily