One of China's most fascinating stories is that of its own written language. For more than 4,000 years those odd hieroglyphics have been the chief communications tool of the earth's most numerous people. Even today they bring together more than 600 million persons who speak a large assortment of dialects, many of them mutually incomprehensible. The symbols themselves are beautiful, an art form all their own, and they are also independent of the phonetics that assist but also afflict all languages except Chinese or those that are Chinese-related.
Presumably all written languages developed from primitive picture-writing. Others went the way of phonetic alphabets and nearly total abstraction. Chinese pursued a different course. Its evolution was from pictograms to ideograms and phonograms. For example, the original character for sun was a circle with a dot in the center, for the moon a crescent and dots. Both were unmistakable. Then the two pictograms were put together to form ming, the ideogram for brightness. Subsequently, ming became the sound radical in the word meng, a phonogram meaning "league." Here origins become a bit more complicated. Meng is the word for brightness with a basin-shaped character below. In ancient China, members of a "league" had to smear animal blood on their lips before voicing oath of allegiance to their organization, and the blood was contained in a basin.
Principles of Chinese word-formation have not changed. However, the number of characters—or concepts to be conveyed—has increased tremendously with the growing complexity of life and the known universe. This has been offset to some extent by simplification of the characters. Short-hand forms have come into use that are only vaguely associated with the shape of a man or a house or a tree. Yet because of the continuity of the characters, it is possible to trace the development of Chinese literature, philosophy, and ethics—in fact the whole of Chinese culture—by analyzing the appropriate characters.
This study begins in the second millennium before Christ. Written Chinese is older than that, but exactly how much older, no one knows, and traces have been obliterated by time and the elements. A book dating to the second millennium says, "In the olden days of history, there were many scholars who devoted themselves to the invention of written languages. However, only the one invented by Tsang Chieh has been transmitted to posterity because of its uniformity." Tsang Chieh was the official in charge of historical records in the court of Huang Ti, the legendary Yellow Emperor (2674-2574 B.C.). None of Tsang Chieh's characters survive. The earliest extant form of writing is that used for inscriptions on oracle bones in the Shang-Yin period of 1766-1122 B.C. This is where study of the Chinese written language must begin.
Cracks of the Future
Yin, a lost city near present-day Anyang in Honan province, was the Shang capital to which Emperor Pan Keng moved in 1387 B.C. to escape Yellow river floods. Thereafter, the dynasty also was called Yin. The rule of Yin lasted another 278 years until it was replaced by the Chou dynasty.
As shown in archeological research, the people of Yin were ancestor-worshipers. They offered sacrifices to their forbears in rituals held at regular intervals. On such occasions, oracle bones made of tortoise shells or ox scapula were used in divination. The bones were thinned and polished. Then they were held over a fire until they developed cracks. Priests interpreted the cracks and made predictions, which then were recorded on the bones in incised characters.
Oracle bone inscriptions are as old as many of the hieroglyphic writings of the ancient Egyptians or the clay tablet cuneiform script of the Summerians and Babylonians. But the occult practices of the oracle bones was unique to China of the time. Not until the Christian era did it spread through Europe and North Africa.
Oracle bone inscriptions have provided the principal guide to the study of the origins of written Chinese and the course of early Chinese history. It is perhaps ironic that the shells and bones once used to read the future now are primary sources for scholars seeking to read the past.
Discovery of the oracle bones occurred toward the end of the last century. A barber of Anyang picked up some old shells in the fields and made a profitable business out of grinding them into powder to stop bleeding. Larger pieces were sold whole. The price was virtually nothing.
The meaning of the shells was not realized until 1899. Wang Yi-yung, chief tutor in the Imperial Household, happened to buy a piece of the "shell medicine." His attention was attracted by the clearly discernible inscriptions that he could neither read nor understand. He knew the shells must be old and valuable.
Some Counterfeits
The tutor's inquiries prompted a curio salesman to purchase shells and bones wholesale at place of excavation in Honan province and retail them at a profit. Gradually, this new curio gained wide circulation among scholarly connoisseurs. It began to be understood that the place of origin was the Yin capital and that the bones were Yin relics.
After 1900, the oracle bones caught the eye of Sinologists in America, Japan, and other countries. Many of the bones were carried out of the country. Forgeries appeared, too. One scholar, seeking the cause of a stench that pervades his house, found "fresh" oracle bones were at fault.
Systematic excavation of the Shang-Yin ruins was undertaken by a team of Chinese archeologists of the National Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, from 1928 to 1937. The team was led by Dr. Li Chi, historian and now chief of the Institute, and the late Tung Tso-ping, philologist who specialized in oracle bone studies.
Hsiao-Tun, a village near Anyang, was chosen as the main site for the excavations that unearthed 11 royal mausoleums. From them came fine bronzes, pottery, jade, and marble as well as the bones. A few of the artifacts had inscriptions in the same characters as those found on the oracle bones. These articles from Anyang stand out as further evidence of highly advanced, very ancient Chinese civilization.
Years of Scholarship
The yield of oracle bones in tombs and elsewhere totaled 24,918 inscribed pieces. These were added to some 75,000 unearthed previously and now in museums around the world. Taiwan has about 35,000, most of them at the Institute of History and Philology of Academia Sinica. Smaller collections are in the possession of the National Historical Museum, National Central Library, and National Taiwan University. Among the largest foreign collections are those of the Toronto Museum and Kyodo University in Japan.
However, the value of a collection cannot be judged only by its numbers. Size of individual pieces may vary from a whole shell or bone to fragments and splinters. Most of the known pieces are fragmentary. The Academia Sinica's collection includes many whole pieces and many fragments that can be assembled. Altogether, it has nearly 600 pieces with complete inscriptions.
The first book on the inscriptions was Tien Yun's Collection of Shells by Liu Ngo, alias Tien Yun. It was published in 1906 and contains reproductions of nearly a thousand pieces. Lo Chen-yu, famous Chinese historian, published his Scripts of the Yin Remains in two volumes in 1914. The most complete is the Inscriptions From the Yin Remains compiled by the Academia Sinica's Institute of History and Philology. The two volumes include reproductions of some 24,000 pieces. All told, some 35,000 pieces have been reproduced in print. The rest are insignificant.
Lengthy Process
This does not mean that the scripts are readily understood. The deciphering has been an endless, painstaking process. The writing is far different from that of the present day.
In more than half century, only 1,300 words have been deciphered, and that is fewer than half of the 3,000 characters found.
Liu Ngo, the first scholar to publish his translations, read correctly only 34 words, including numerals and astrological signs. Sun Yi-jang had deciphered about 180 words by 1904. He also linked his translations with the bronze inscriptions of the Yin and Chou periods. His orientation of the classical philology of China led to establishment of the Institute of History and Philology.
In 1927, La Cheng-yu published a revised edition of his Interpretation of the Scripts of the Yin Remains, identifying 571 words. Prof. Wang Kuo-wei was able to authenticate some early records of Chinese history. For example, the genealogy of the Royal House of Yin, as recorded by Szema Chien in his Shih Chi more than 2,000 years ago, was confirmed beyond doubt. Most of the names of Yin Emperors that appear in the book also are found in the oracle bone inscriptions.
The Yin people listed their ancestors in chronological order in their occult practice. A long list of the Emperors and Empresses is set forth in the oracle bone scripts. Prof. Wang even corrected calligraphic errors in the names of two Yin Emperors.
The oracle bones have helped scholars straighten out mistakes in annotation of the Chinese classics. For example, the Emperor Kao Tsung's chapter Yun-Jih in Shang Shu (Book on Human Relations) had been explained as relating to the Emperor's sacrificial rites for his ancestor Cheng Tan, founder of the Shang-Yin dynasty. Actually the writing concerns the tributes of descendants in honor of the Emperor.
Oracle bone characters also provide new clues to the study of Chinese hieroglyphs and thus shed fresh light on ancient civilization. Mistakes in the Shuo Wen Chieh Tse, the oldest Chinese dictionary, were discovered and corrected. For example, the word for ten—represented by a cross—was explained as pointing to the four directions to show completeness. But in the oracle bone script, it is merely a vertical stroke, possibly indicating only north and south. It became a cross after a dot was placed in the middle of the stroke to distinguish it from similar characters.
Guide to Culture
The hieroglyphs provide a guide to ancient customs. For instance, the word for female and the related characters of mother, wife, and concubine depict the women of Shang-Yin periods in a kneeling posture. Chairs and stools have not yet become household articles.
The words for silkworm and silk appear frequently, and an artificially half-cut cocoon was discovered in the Anyang excavations. Archeological studies have established the fact that silk was one of the most important crafts of Yin and probably is much older. Legend holds that silk worm cultivation dates to the Yellow Emperor's Queen Lei Tsu.
A unique aspect of the oracle bones is the fact that about a tenth of them include the question asked by the diviner. Some also have the answer and even the eventual outcome. From the inscriptions, much can therefore be learned of Shang life as well as the historical foundation provided by the lists of rulers.
Questions usually revolve around such matters as sacrifices and other relations with the spirits, crops and the weather, war, hunting and fishing, travel, illness, and prospects for the next 10-day period, which was then the "week" of East Asia. Shang people made sacrifices to the gods, usually of animals, but sometimes of humans and even of liquor, which was poured on the ground in libation. Deities included earth, wind, the cardinal points of the compass, and vague natural entities.
Role of Ancestors
One god was called the Ti or Shang Ti (Supreme Ti). Presumably this is a "first ancestor," and the ancestor veneration of the Chinese people dates to these times and probably before. Many of the oracle bone inquires concern the help or harm that an ancestor was likely to visit upon his living descendants.
Shang apparently had emerged from the stone age into a flourishing bronze age. Hundreds of bronze articles were found in Anyang excavations, ranging from ceremonial vessels to weapons and articles of daily use. Also discovered were casting molds, pottery used in the bronze foundry, ingots of tin and copper. Actually, the Yin capital was then a center of the bronze industry.
Jade already was highly prized. There was a primitive "money" in the form of the cowrie shells of the south. These left their mark on the writing system. Many of the characters concerned with wealth and trade originate in the "shell" sign.
Apparently Shang was a sort city-state but with some outlying settlements scattered over the North China plain, along the lower reaches of the Wei river in Shensi and the Fen river in Shansi. Although the effective political unit was relatively small, it was large enough to field armies of up to 5,000 men.
Rulers were hereditary kings. Tombs were large pits; one was 43 feet deep and 65 feet square. The dead were buried with articles of daily use for employment in the afterlife. Aristocrats fought in war chariots not unlike those of Homeric Greece. At first they were pulled by two and later by four horses. Probably each chariot carried a driver and spearman as well as the sword-wielding aristocrat.
Palace buildings were imposing for the time; one measured 26 by 92 feet. Architecture was not so different from the China of recent times. The roof was carried by rows of wooden pillars. Walls at first were made of pounded earth and later of brick, but were partitions rather than an essential part of the main structure. As is still the custom in North China, buildings were oriented to face south.
Houses of the common people were not much improved over the pit dwellings of neolithic times. There was a great gap between the nobles and ordinary people. Human sacrifice was not unusual, but seems to have involved captives taken from among the sheep-herding tribes to the west.
This is oracle bone inscription about hunting trip of long ago, translated in the text. (File photo)
An example of an oracle bone inscription illustrated in this article sets forth a question that King Wu-ting asked the diviners nearly 3,300 years ago: "We shall hunt at Hwei. Can we make captures?" The prognostication was for good hunting, and the inscription then records a bag of one tiger, deer, 164 foxes, 159 deer, a brace of red pheasant, and 18 other birds.
The task of translating and interpreting the oracle bones goes on at the Academia Sinica, at other free Chinese institutions of learning and research, and at museums and universities concerned with Chinese artifacts and studies. When the work is finished, still more will be known about the people at the dawn of China's civilization, and also about the development of a written language that is read today by more people than any other known to man.