In the 20th century, there were "four major discoveries" in the Chinese archival circles that shocked the world, namely the Cabinet Archives of the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Oracle Bone Archives in Anyang, Henan, the Archives of the Tibetan Scriptures in the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, and the Juyan Hanjian Archives. Among them, the most famous and far-reaching is the Oracle Bone Archives in Anyang, Henan. But the oracle bone is more than three thousand years away from us, as a lost civilization created writing, how was it interpreted, and what information is provided to future generations?
"Huainanzi" said: "In the past, Cangjie wrote books, but the sky rained and millet, and the ghosts cried at night." "It is said that at the moment when Cangjie, the ancestor of writing, invented writing, it began to rain in the sky, and the ghosts were crying at night. According to the explanation of Zhang Yanyuan of the Tang Dynasty, "Creation cannot hide its secrets, so the sky rains; the spirit monsters cannot hide their form, so the ghosts cry at night", which means that since human beings mastered the writing, everything has no secret. According to the American anthropologist Morgan, human history can be divided into the era of obscurantism, barbarism and civilization, and the beginning of the era of civilization is marked by the "invention of the phonetic alphabet and the use of literature", which shows the importance of writing to human civilization.
However, our ancestral documents are basically from the inheritance after the Warring States Qin and Han Dynasties; for the three generations of antiquity, the first-hand written materials are very thin. Although in the Book of Shang, the Zhou people said that "there are Yin ancestors, there are canons and books", it can be seen that at least in the Shang Dynasty, the simple book records were already used. But the embarrassing thing is that bamboo Jane is not a convenient text carrier for preservation, so that the earliest characterd bamboo Jane unearthed today is only found in the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng at the time of the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, and the bamboo Jane of the earlier Western Zhou Spring and Autumn Period is not available, let alone the earlier Shang Dynasty script.
Of course, in addition to jane and paper, there are also many text carriers that are easy to preserve, such as bronze. When it comes to the earliest writing today, it is generally said that it is the Shang Dynasty oracle bone, but this statement is not very accurate; because the Shang Dynasty also had gold inscriptions engraved on bronze, and even pottery, stone, jade, bone, and horns, such as the famous Simu Pengding, which was named after the three characters of "Simu Peng"; and compared with the oracle bone, the golden text is even a more standardized text. The discovery of Jin Wen in the Shang Dynasty even existed in the Song Dynasty, and the "Shaoxing Neifu Ancient Artifact Review" included a "Zu Xin Zun", and the author Zhang Zhuo believed that this was the object of the Shang King Zu Xin.
However, on the whole, the written materials before the 20th century can be convinced that very few are from the Shang Dynasty, let alone form a complete text system that reflects the Shang civilization, so that the history of the Shang Dynasty has always been in the fog. Until 1921, Mr. Hu Shi, in "Methods for Studying the Causes of the Nation", still proposed that "the history before the Eastern Zhou Dynasty is not credible in a single word"; of course, Hu Shi is mainly aimed at historical documents, not historical ontology. However, with the discovery and interpretation of oracle bones in the same period, this dynasty in the wind gradually proved to exist, and the historical documents were not completely untrustworthy. It all goes back to 1899.
In that year, Fan Weiqing, an antique dealer in Weixian County, Shandong Province, purchased a batch of Chinese medicinal materials "dragon bones" from Xiaotun Village in Anyang, Henan Province, and brought them to the capital for wang Yirong, who was then the Qing Dynasty Guozi Supervisor of Wine. Wang Yirong was a Jinshi master, and the "Qing History Manuscript" said that "Yi Rong was involved in the history of books, loved jinshi, Weng Tonggong, Pan Zuyin and called him erudite", and he keenly found that the symbols depicted on it were very much like an ancient script! So he began to buy it for a lot of money. However, in the gengzi rebellion of the following year, Wang Yirong was martyred, but he consciously collected and preserved the oracle bones, making him the "first person in the oracle bones".
In 1901, Liu Hu purchased most of the "dragon bones" from Wang Yirong's home, and after two years of collation and research, he wrote the first oracle bone bibliography in 1903, that is, the famous "Iron Cloud Hidden Turtle". Liu Hu clearly pointed out in the preface of "Tieyun Hidden Turtle" that this is "Yin Ren Sword and Pen Script", in addition, Liu Hu interpreted and read more than 40 words, which seems to be as accurate as 34 characters today. However, most of the words that Liu Hu interpreted were relatively common stems and numbers, and the methods were mainly from personal golden stone cultivation, and there were not many specific reasons. But in any case, through Liu Hu's research, the "dragon bone" began to be widely known as a kind of cultural relics.
The first person who was really considered to have systematically interpreted the Oracle was Sun Yirang. Sun Yi Rang was a master of ancient writing, claiming that he had "studied the Great Seal of the Ancient Seal of Mengzhi for forty years, and saw more than 2,000 kinds of Yi instruments." In 1904, he met Liu Hu's "Tieyun Hidden Turtle", and after two months of study, he found that its text was "roughly similar to the Jin text, the seal painting is particularly simple, the shapes and sounds are not possessed, and there are many shapes and characters", so he began to interpret and classify the characters, which were set as ten articles such as Sun and Moon, Zhenbu, Bushi, Ghost God, Buren, Guanshi, Fang guo, Ceremony, Text, miscellaneous examples, etc., which is the first work on the classification of oracle bones, "Qiwen Example".
The following year, Sun Yirang also wrote "Mingyuan", mentioning the analysis method of the "Qiwen Example", that is, "a little bit of the Jinwen, the Turtle Shell, the Shiguwen, and the Guizhou Hongyan Ancient Carvings, and the "Shuowen" ancient fences are mutually surveyed and proofread, exposing their differences, and will be the most comparable to the ancient texts, large and small seals." To put it simply, his main method is the comparison of ancient glyphs and partial analysis, in which the correct interpretation of the 185 characters such as Zhen, Multiplication, Shooting, Qiang, Go, Province, Ruo, Geng, Zhao, Poultry, Zhou, and Wu are correctly interpreted. This is the initial theoretical exploration of oracle bone interpretation, and it is also the basic method of oracle bone interpretation until today.
After Sun Yi rang, it was the famous "Oracle Bone Four Halls", Tang Lan said that "Xuetang (Luo Zhenyu) guided Fu Xianlu, Guantang (Wang Guowei) followed the examination history, Yantang (Dong Zuobin) districted its era, and Dingtang (Guo Moruo) issued his resignation, which was already a very popular time" What achievements did the "Oracle Four Halls" have in interpreting and researching the Oracle?
Lin Wu Gongzi was a writer of literature and history, specializing in the history of the pre-Qin, Qin, and Han dynasties. He is the signed author of today's headlines, the signed author of Wukong Q&A, the columnist of the surging history, the columnist of The History of NetEase, the co-author of Baidu Ta, the co-author of the whole history, and the published three kinds of physical books such as "Pre-Qin Ancient Guozhi", "Wu Yue Chunqiu of the Pre-Qin Ancient Guozhi", and "The Complete Painting Collection of Mountains and Sea Classics", and his works are scattered in "National Humanistic History", "Advancing together in the same boat", "Beijing Evening News", "Crazy Reading", "Awakening Lion Guoxue", "Hundred Forums", "Weihai Evening News" and other newspapers, magazines and self-media. Thanks for reading, welcome to pay attention!