Locust General
The oldest attested form of written Chinese, carved into bone and shell.
The oracle bone script is the oldest attested form of written Chinese, dating to the late 2nd millennium BC. Inscriptions were made by carving characters into oracle bones, usually either the shoulder bones of oxen or the plastrons of turtles. The writings themselves mainly record the results of official divinations carried out on behalf of the Late Shang royal family. These divinations took the form of scapulimancy where the oracle bones were exposed to flames, creating patterns of cracks that were then subjected to interpretation. Both the prompt and interpretation were inscribed on the same piece of bone that had been used for the divination itself. Out of an estimated 150,000 inscriptions that have been uncovered, the vast majority were unearthed at Yinxu, the site of the final Shang capital (modern-day Anyang, Henan).
Lore & Background
The oracle bone script—along with several roughly contemporaneous bronzeware inscriptions using a different style—constitutes the earliest corpus of Chinese writing, and is the direct ancestor of the Chinese family of scripts developed over the next three millennia. Their study is essential for the research of Chinese etymologies. It is also the direct ancestor of over a dozen East Asian writing systems. The length of inscriptions ranges from 10 to over 100 characters, but a few dozen is typical. The subjects of concern in inscriptions are broad, and include war, ritual sacrifice, and agriculture, as well as births, illnesses, and deaths in the royal family. As such, they provide invaluable insights into the character of late Shang society. Each of the last nine Shang kings are named in the inscriptions beginning with Wu Ding, whose accession is variously dated between 1250 and 1200 BC. Oracle bone inscriptions corresponding to Wu Ding's reign have been radiocarbon dated to 1254–1197 BC (±10 years). Following the overthrow of the Shang by the Zhou dynasty in c. 1046 BC, divination using milfoil became more common; far fewer oracle bone inscriptions are dated to the Western Zhou. No Zhou-era sites with a comparable cache of inscriptions to Yinxu have been found; however, examples from this period appear to be more widespread, having been found near most major population centers. New sites have continued to be discovered since 2000.
Reader's Guide
Oraculology (甲骨学; 甲骨學; jiǎgǔxué) is the study of oracle bones and oracle bone script. It is a humanities discipline that focuses on the Chinese Upper Antiquity oracle characters. Oracle bone science is the study of oracle bone script itself; it is a discipline of paleography. This includes the integration of theories, research methods and materials from various disciplines, such as history, archaeology, historical culture, historical literature, and cultural anthropology, to thoroughly study the historical and cultural background of the oracle bones and some of the patterns of the oracle bone divination. It is a diversified and specialized discipline. In the early days of oracle bone discovery, oracle bones were called qiwen, and the study of oracle bones was called qiology. In 1931, Zhou Yitong proposed for the first time that 'oracle bone science' was an independent discipline. Wang Yuxin emphasized that oracle bones are precious cultural relics and historical materials left over from the ancient period, but their value for archaeological and historical research lies in orthography beyond script interpretation, which has become increasingly recognized by scholars as orthography develops. Oracle bone science is a systematic and scientific inquiry into the inherent laws of the oracle bone script itself and uses it as a basis for glimpsing the history, society, and customs of the ancient world. The oracle bones should not be confused with orthography.
Did You Know?
- The most recent major discovery was the Huayuanzhuang cache found in 1993, with 579 of its 1,608 pieces bearing inscriptions.
- The term 'oracle bone script' is a translation of a phrase coined by American missionary Frank H. Chalfant in his 1906 book Early Chinese Writing.
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