Oracle Bone Inscriptions

Inayat Sartaj 1st YEAR BBA-M&S A-27

Oracle Bone Inscriptions

The Discovery
Oracle bone inscription is the oldest and systemized form of Chinese character found hitherto. The words are being recorded by carving characters onto animal bones or tortoise's shells. The Yin Ruins, where the characters found, in Anyang in Henan Province, therefore also called "Yin Ruins Inscriptions" or "Yin Contracts". It is known that the oracle bone inscription was first used in the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC 1046 BC). Oracle bone inscription was first found in Anyang in late nineteenth century. It inherited the method of characters carved on pottery. In the latter period of the Shang Dynasty (fourteenth century BC to eleventh century BC) the royal family note downed the details of events of auspice activities onto animal bones or tortoise's shells. After the Zhou Dynasty eliminated the Shang Dynasty, oracle bone inscriptions had still been using for quite a long time. They were becoming ancient Chinese characters system. There is another story told about the discovery of oracle bone inscription. During the Guangxu Reign (1875 1908) of the Qing Dynasty, a man surnamed Wang, who was a supervisor at the highest educational institution (Guozijian, ) in China of that time. One day he found that a traditional Chinese medicine called "dragon bone", it sounded strange he felt. He curiously searched in the medicine pieces, by surprise, he saw some of them had the patterns of Chinese characters. He bought the medicine. At home, he found that there were similar patterns in "dragon bones". He believed that these were a kind of character and thought that they were from the Shang Dynasty. Not so long later, people found the place that the dragon bones were being excavated Xiaotun Village, Anyang in Henan Province (). They discovered many tortoise shells and animal bones with carved patterns. There were about 5,000 kinds of different pattern, of which 1,000 were characters that their meanings had been known. Since then, people called these bones and shells Jia Gu Wen () Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Phonogram characters accounted about 27 per cent of the excavated oracle bone inscriptions, which are being regarded as the rudiment of modern Chinese characters.

The Shang Dynasty was very superstitious. They practiced auspice if they wanted to know if there would be a natural disaster in the next ten days, whether it would rain or not, would good harvest occur this year, could the Shang win the next war and which kind of work should be done to gods during rituals. Even every detail in their daily life, including pregnancy, health and dream, were needed to be visualized by auspice, because people wanted to know the will of the gods and ghosts. They used tortoise shells or big pieces of animal bone. Usually carved or drilled a hole on the back of a piece of a bone. When auspice, they would burn in the hole, and the bone surface would crack, which was called "sign". The shapes of the cracked sign would indicate good or bad omens. The Chinese characters at that time had become a written language form. Archeologists have found hitherto that there are around 4,000 characters, which can be recognized today. Among them, there are words to describe essential events, pictographs, associative compounds and phonograms. However, the actual shapes and patterns of these ancient oracle bone characters are very different from the kind that of Chinese people are using nowadays, though the making of the system is quite similar.

Characteristics
If observing to the number of characters and their structures,oracle bone inscriptions are having been developed to a strict system of a written language. Although the later Chinese language characteristics are quite clear seen, the primitive picturecharacter styles are obvious. In making of the characters, some pictographs are done to depict the things that ancient people had been used. However, how many strokes should be in a single character were uncertain and the lateral position of it was unfixed. Some of the associative compounds in oracle bone inscriptions are seen that a side of a certain character is joined by other to which

will make the meaning clear, but not to fix the form and shape of it, therefore there are many probably more than ten variants of the same character with the same meaning. As oracle bone inscriptions are pictographs, they are telling the meanings of thing, so the sizes and lengths of them will depend on how complicate the things to which the characters are describing. The bigger character occupies a number of spaces of regular sized ones, and sometime the length of the characters will be different, too. Because oracle bone inscriptions are carved onto animal bones of different toughness by knifes, therefore the strokes are usually thin with less curved ones. This is very different from Chinese characters that people have been using today. Oracle bone inscriptions, though simple and primitive, demonstrate the ancient beauty of the old Chinese culture over 3,000 years before present.

Development
Oracle bone inscription is the mother of Chinese calligraphy. The twentieth emperor of the Shang Dynasty, Pan Geng (, reigned 1300 BC 1277 BC) and later the emperor Wu Ding (, reigned 1259 BC 1200 BC) influenced the future use of the ancient characters. Emperor Wu liked to use tortoise's shell during auspices. At that time, the Shang Dynasty was strong and prosperous, thus the writing style was impressive and majestic. It was the best era in oracle bone inscriptions. Curved strokes are seen that were seldom used in other periods. Emperors Zu Geng () and Zu Jia () in early twelfth century BC, about a forty years' span. They were honest and virtuous monarchs. Innovation had hardly made in oracle bone inscriptions and the grandiose of calligraphy had been weakened. After the above mentioned period, the oracle bone inscriptions were in a decadent age for about fourteen years. Many articles were badly or mistakenly written, with a

lot of wrong characters. In latter half of twelfth century BC, Wen Wu Ding () Emperor was quite nostalgic. He wanted to resume the grandiose of Wu Ding era. The strokes in oracle bone inscriptions are thin, but they look very tough and powerful. In eleventh century BC, the Chinese calligraphy style had become rigorous, with no any innovation but also no decadent trace found. The patterns of the slim strokes on the bones are influenced by the sculptor's knife technique. When doing auspice, it carved "yes" and "no" on the left and right sides of the middle line of a tortoise's shell respectively. People would write something on both sides, thus obtained a symmetrical visual impact. The carved characters, which were concaved on bones, would be filled with red ink.