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E-book The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East

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Penilaian

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The Huayuanzhuang East oracle bone inscriptions, first discovered in 1991 and completely published in six folio volumes in 2003, are a synchronically compact and unified late Shang (ca. 1250-1045 BC) corpus of several thousand individual divination accounts inscribed on hundreds of still intact turtle shells and cattle scapulae. Produced under the patronage of a prince of the royal family during the reign of the 27th Shang king, Wu Ding, these “princely communications” are undeniably one of the more important epigraphic finds in the history of Chinese archaeology. The collection as a scientifically excavated type has now become a model for corpus-based and statistically driven approaches to oracle bone study, particularly as it concerns the complex process of decision-making and how it was documented. Due to the limited discovery of oracle bones produced for people other than the kings, our understanding of Shang civilization has re-mained partial and incomplete. What the field of early China and ancient world studies has needed for quite some time is more intact oracle bone discoveries that provide detailed information about a continuous period of time, engage with multiple perspectives from a broader dimension of society, and attest to the op-erational methods and technical expertise of the diviners and scribes who worked collectively to produce these material documents. Since 1899 more than 73,000 pieces of inscribed divination shell and bone have been found inside the moated enclosure of the Anyang-core at the former capital of the late Shang state.1 Nearly all of these were divinations produced on behalf of or by Shang kings. This type of oracle record (in Chinese the dataset is called Wang buci???) has been aptly characterized as the “descriptions of ex-periences and priorities of the Shang kings...how they imagined and created their world both human and natural.”2 There is however a much smaller and relatively understudied type of divination record that represents less than five percent of extant Shang oracle bone inscriptions. These were produced on behalf of or per-sonally by members of the royal family and elite persons, that is, for people other than the Shang kings (in Chinese the dataset is called fei Wang buci????).3The largest subtype amongst divinations of this kind were those made by and for the royal family, particularly for ladies and princes, and this is the group to which the Huayuanzhuang East oracle bone inscriptions belong. Scholars in the early 1930’s first recognized that there were divinations made for people other than kings,4 and to date nine subtypes, almost all of which seemingly date to Wu Ding’s reign or slightly thereafter, have been identified (Table 1).5 Each subtype has dis-tinctive characteristics that when separated into independent datasets reveals dif-ferences with divination made for and by the kings. These two coexisting but inde-pendent types of oracle bone inscriptions—divination for the kings and divination for people other than the kings—were often complementary, but at times, could also be contradictory.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

418.02 SCH t

Penerbit

London : De Gruyter., 2020

Deskripsi Fisik

488 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781501514487

Klasifikasi

418.02

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Translating and Interpreting

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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