Abstract
Statistics drawn from the Shāng oracle bone inscriptions discovered in Pit H3 at Huāyuánzhuāng East challenge an assumption that all divination statements, or ‘charges’ mìng cí 命辭, be classified as zhēn cí 貞辭, and question an inflexible practice that systematically reads the prefatory word zhēn 貞 ‘test (the correctness of)’ into a divination account when it is absent. The restricted use of zhēn in this unified corpus of inscriptions implies that it had a particular and focused application in the process of decision-making. The Huāyuánzhuāng East inscriptions thus reveal a complex divination matrix that exemplifies the development of royal divination as an institution at Ānyáng more widely.
1 Introduction*
The Huāyuánzhuāng East (hereafter HuāDōng) oracular inscriptions comprise 2452 individual divination records inscribed on 529 turtle shells and bovine scapulae that are either intact pieces or large fragments. 1 Produced under the patronage of a prince of the royal family during the latter half of the reign of the 27th Shāng king, Wǔ Dīng (r. 1238-1180 bc), 2 these princely communications are undeniably one of the more important epigraphic finds in the history of Chinese archaeology. The corpus 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. The collection is particularly important for its preservation and intactness, the coherent and unified nature of the inscriptions, and the fact that many of the records can be synchronized into integral divination sets and timelines that span periods of weeks and months.
Statistics reveal something striking about the language of the HuāDōng inscriptions: a mere 125 of the individual accounts (5%) on just 76 pieces (14%) record the technical term zhēn貞. 3 This is remarkable because a commonly held generalization prior to this discovery would have one think that the very act of oracle bone divination required it. 4 The generalization is exaggerated, surely, but not without substance; in the Shāng kings’ divination accounts unearthed mainly from Xiǎotún North, but only starting with model Diviner Bīn group (Bīn-zǔ bǔ cí 賓組卜辭) inscriptions (mid-to-late Wǔ Dīng), the word is endemic. Scholars, however, remain quite aware that in records from every divination practice at Ānyáng, whether it was royal or non-royal, there are accounts that do not include the word zhēn. 5
Statistics drawn from HuāDōng inscriptions challenge an assumption that all divination statements, or ‘charges’ mìng cí 命辭, be classified as zhēn cí 貞辭, and question an inflexible practice that systematically reads zhēn into a divination record when it is absent. The restricted use of the prefatory word zhēn in the HuāDōng inscriptions implies that it had a particular and focused application in the process of decision-making. Based on this refined understanding of the process, and to distinguish between distinct manners of oracle bone divination at a high-level, I term divination statements introduced by zhēn as ‘test’ divinations, and divination statements not preceded or covered by zhēn as ‘non-test’ divinations. 6
In this paper, I shall demonstrate how the setting of two modes of divination within an integral system lay bare a fundamental complexity of an advanced solution. The HuāDōng inscriptions reveal a complex divination matrix that exemplifies the development of royal divination as an institution at Ānyáng more widely. 7
2 Research Methodology
As a principle, I do not subscribe to a default hypothesis that the widespread nonappearance of the word zhēn ‘test’ in a preface should systematically be reasoned as a scribal omission or abbreviation, and that if it is absent, we should still read the divination statement as though it were present. 8 At the very center of their duties the role of oracle scribes was to faithfully record acts of divination in a coherent manner. 9 Frequently encountered in the records of all Shāng divination practice, scribal manners developing both out of the repetitive nature of the material and for reasons of economy necessitated omissions and abbreviations of redundant and anaphoric content. However, the impetus and tendency to write like this—a scribes working method—by no means intended to be confused and unintelligible. One of the keys to reading Shāng divination records is locating antecedents and, where possible, reconstructing synchronies. 10
In dealing with issues of inconsistency in the language of the bone inscriptions the ‘sound’ methodology of David Shepard Nivison can be applied; 11 namely, that “when two sentences look different…we ought if possible to assume that they are different. There is a converse to this principle: when two sentences look the same…we ought not to assume that they are different.” In applying Nivison’s theory to a corpus of nearly 2500 clearly legible and mostly grammatical HuāDōng inscriptions, we can easily reformat the methodology to fit our constraints: It is methodologically ‘unsound’ to assume that a divination statement not introduced by the word zhēn貞 ought be read as though it were; or conversely, in knowing, through hard data, that less than 5 out of every 100 divination statements are marked either directly or indirectly by this word, a preface formula that does have it ought, by induction, to contain a discernible and logical pattern of application.
While Sinologists like Paul L.M. Serruys and Nivison reached new heights in understanding the nature of Shāng divination through their steadfast application of Bernhard Karlgren’s base definition of zhēn 貞 as ‘verify’ to the language of the oracle bone inscriptions, 12 the lack of a unified and synchronically compact corpus such as we now have in the HuāDōng archive limited their ability to understand certain complexities of how oracle bone decision-making worked. To his credit, Nivison was aware that many statements were not introduced by zhēn 貞 but acknowledged that he simply did not know why. 13 Yet despite this obstacle, Nivison has, in my opinion, nearly hit the bullseye in refining Karlgren’s definition of zhēn as “to officially certify as correct”, with an emphasis that one of its functions intends to verify previous divination results. 14
Though 貞 is usually defined in accordance with the sw as “to ask, query,” this meaning is almost unique to the sw and Zhouli 周禮 (i.e., a rather late development and rare in occurrence) as against the more frequent and regular meaning 貞: 正也, 定也, 善也, 信也; there is a majority of usages of zhen 貞 (adjective + noun): “reliable, good, fine, correct”. If we try and explain 貞 of the introductory formula of divination, not in the light of sw and later, rare usages, but of a majority of usages, we can only think of a verbal sense, “to test, to try out, to make true, correct” in the sense of “find out the right (course of action)” parallel with “tried, tested, reliable, correct, good”. In this hypothesis, xx卜, Y貞 would simply mean: “In the bone divination of day xx, diviner Y tested the proposition, or proposed for test (i.e., rectification) the following course of action or alternative courses of action… 15
The graphic root of zhēn 貞 ‘test’ is dǐng 鼎, which writes, among other words, an adverb meaning ‘definitely’ or ‘surely’. 16 Zhēn 貞 is etymologically related to cognates that mean ‘right course of action, correct’ zhèng 正, ‘make certain; settle’ dìng 定, ‘directly facing; proper’ dàng 當, and ‘authenticate’ zhèng 證. 17 In Shāng divination records and non-oracular documents, ‘test’, or ‘make certain’ (> ‘certify’), carried with it a seal of authority. 18
3 An Overview of Divinations Introduced by the Word Zhēn 貞 ‘Test’ in the HuāDōng Oracular Inscriptions
Most test divinations in the HuāDōng corpus fit neatly into a concise typology. Test divinations in the HuāDōng divination practice were characteristically made without much repetition and only infrequently used an antithetical formula couched in both positive and negative modes. As I shall demonstrate below with examples, test divination ‘codas’ (i.e., a concluding word or phrase) were most often phrased in a negative mode to derive a positive result. These divinatory manners, except for test divinations about the upcoming week, 19 differ from how test divinations functioned in divinations made by or on behalf of Wǔ Dīng.
I shall take a position, by constructing a typology and establishing it through annotated case studies, that within the decision-making process test divinations increased the complexity of royal divination. 20 As the following citations will show, test divinations functioned to get a definite result, as opposed to non-test divinations which could still probe, discover, and guess (i.e., divine). 21 Test divinations in the HuāDōng practice mainly validated previous divination results and the statements (or anticipated statements) of others, verified health and well-being of animate objects, and determined, as a definitive step, the proper course of action in response to real-time urgency.
4 Typology
Test divinations can be divided into two main subtypes that I term here Type A and Type B. Type A test divinations occur in the following forms,
- (a) “Date + bǔ 卜 ‘divine’ + zhēn ‘test’ 貞 + utterance”
- (b) “Zhēn ‘test’ 貞 + utterance”
- (c) “Name + zhēn ‘test’ 貞 + utterance”
Below I adduce thirteen model examples (nineteen individual accounts). 22
53：（25）癸卜，貞：子耳鳴亡害。一
（26）癸卜，貞：子耳鳴亡害。二
Divined on day Guǐ, tested: Our lord’s 23 ear ringing is without harm. 1
Divined on day Guǐ, tested: Our lord’s ear ringing is without harm. 2
78：（2）貞：伭不死。一
（3）貞：伭。
Tested: Xuán is not going to die. 1
Tested: Xuán.
431：（1）貞：右馬不死。一
（2）其死。一
Tested: The horse on the right is not going to die. 1
(It) likely dies. 1
122：（2）金子貞：其有艱。一
Jīnzǐ tested: There will likely be (some kind of) affliction. 1
157: （7）己卯卜，貞：螽不死。子曰：其死。一
（9） 貞：其死。一
Divined on day Jǐmǎo, tested: Zhōng is not going to die. Our lord said, “(He) likely dies.” 1
Tested: (He) likely dies. 1
186：（1）貞：奠(鄭)不死。一
Tested: Zhèng is not going to die. 1
241: （11）辛亥卜，貞：琡羌有疾，不死。子占曰：羌其死唯今，其瘳亦唯今。一二
Divined on day Xīnhài, tested: The Lapidary Qiāng has illness; (he) is not going to die. Our lord read the crack(s) and said, “If Qiāng dies it will be today. If (he) recovers, it will also be today.” 12
321 : (5) 甲子卜，貞：𡚱中周妾不死。一二
Divined on day Jiǎzǐ, tested: Sì, a concubine of Zhōng Zhōu, is not going to die.12
264：（2）己未卜，貞：賈壴有疾，亡[延]。一
Divined on day Jǐwèi, tested: Trader Zhù, having an illness, will not have (it) [persist]. 1
215:（2）甲戌卜，貞：羌弗死子臣。一二三
Divined on day Jiǎxū, tested: Qiāng are not going to cause our lord’s servants to die. 123
102：(1) 乙卜，貞：賈壴有口，弗死。一
(2) 乙卜，貞：中周有口，弗死。一
(3) 乙卜，貞：二卜有求（咎），唯見。今有心
（畏），亡
（憂）。
24
一
Divined on day Yǐ, tested: Trader Zhù has mouth (sickness); (he) is not going to die from it. 1
Divined on day Yǐ, tested: Zhōng Zhōu has mouth (sickness); (he) is not going to die from it. 1
Divined on day Yǐ, tested: (In) the second divination crack there is fault, it has been seen (or: appeared). Now there is a heart terrorized with fear; there is nothing ominous. 25 1
369：壬辰卜，貞：右
[弗]安，有䞢，非廌□。子占曰： 三日不死，不其死。一
Divined on day Rénchén, tested: The mare on the right [is not going] to be calmed; there is agitation, (and) it is not the antelope…Our lord read the crack and said, “If not dying in three days, (she) is not likely to die.” 1
290: （1）辛卯卜，貞：婦母有言，子从徵，不从子臣。一
Divined on day Xīnmǎo, tested: The Lady Mother will have words: our lord is to follow along with Zhēng (and) is not to follow along with our lord’s servants. 1
In summary, 56/125 (45%) test divinations in the HuāDōng inscriptions are of this type, and, among these, 44/56 (79%) are about whether an animate subject, human or animal, will die or have something bad or calamitous happen to it. Health and well-being were evidently a central motivation for making test divinations in the HuāDōng practice.
Type B test divinations occur in the following formula,
“[Name] + zhēn貞+ name or appellation”
Below, I provide some examples.
2：（3）友貞：子金。
Yǒu tested: Lord Jīn.
The form of this divination account is comparable to 78.3 cited in above; I will explain below how to understand this type of abbreviation. The following three shells, 205-349-441, form a set. I leave out numbering the divinations as the sequence is unclear; (the inscriptions are cited however in the order proposed by the Editors.)
205：
筒。一
貞：陞。二三
貞：母。二
貞：延。二
貞：三小子。三
Tǒng. 1
Tested: Shēng. 23
Tested: Mother. 2
Tested: Yán. 26 2
Tested: Third little child. 3
349:
貞：陞。一
貞：筒。一
貞：子。一
貞：中（仲）子。二
子亡憂。二
貞：母。一
貞：陞。二
Tested: Shēng. 1
Tested: Tǒng. 1
Tested: Our lord. 1
Tested: Middle son. 2
Our lord will have nothing ominous. 2
Tested: Mother. 1
Testing: Shēng. 2
441:
貞：陞 一
貞：配 一
貞：肉
貞：陞 二
貞：通 一
貞：商 一
貞：又（侑）𠬝（報）司（姒）庚。二
貞：筒 一
Tested: Shēng. 1
Tested: [Our lord’s] spouse. 1
Tested: Ròu (or: Meat?).
Tested: Shēng. 2
Tested: Tōng. 1
Tested: Shāng. 1
Tested: Make offerings, as a requital, to Elder Sister Gēng. 27 2
Tested: Tǒng. 1
64/125 (51%) test divinations in the HuāDōng inscriptions are of this type. There has been a debate about whether the orientation of these inscriptions should be read as I suggest above, or whether they should be read in the reverse as “name + zhēn”. 28 Among the 64 instance of Type B test divinations, 19 occur on the three-shell set 205-349-441. 29 To this, we can add the four divination records on the two-shell set 78–464.
Divination records on the three-shell set 205-349-441 have obviously been abbreviated. Divination statements introduced by the word ‘test’ revolve around a repeating sequence of people’s names. The scribe has, for some reason, omitted the grammatical part. A comparison with the following HuāDōng divination sets, including the integral set of test divinations on 78–464, reveals what kind of information was likely omitted.
78：（2）貞：伭不死。一
（3）貞：伭。 一
464:（1）貞：伭。 一
（2）貞：伭。 一
Tested: Xuán is not going to die. 1
Tested: Xuán. 1
Tested: Xuán. 1
Tested: Xuán. 1
247:（14）丁亥卜：子金其往，亡災。一
55:（1）丁亥卜：子金。一
（2）丁亥卜：子金。一
Divined on day Dīnghài: If lord Jīn goes, there will be no calamity. 1
Divined on day Dīnghài: Lord Jīn. 1
Divined on day Dīnghài: Lord Jīn. 1
A noteworthy feature of divination records where Jīn was the subject is that divination statements, as per 55, appear either to have been intentionally omitted or abbreviated. 30 Based primarily on corresponding dates, but also taking into consideration that divination accounts about Jīn in shorthand are otherwise not dated, I propose to synchronize 247 and 55 into a set. 31 Xuán, conversely, is only seen on these two pieces. A coherent reading principle thus recommends these records were originally a set too. Both reconstructed sets show how to read and understand abbreviated divination accounts. We cannot be sure if the original utterance was abbreviated by the diviner or whether it was due to the scribe who wrote it down afterwards. We also cannot be sure if 78.3 was couched in the positive mode, i.e., Xuán will die, or, more likely, whether it was a repeat of 78.2; however, it seems likely that other abbreviated Type B test divinations would have been connected to antecedents, like 78.2 or 247.14. To read and understand 55.1-2 and 464.1-2, one needs to know about the antecedents 247.14 and 78.2-3.
Inscriptions of this type are not uncommon in Shāng oracular inscriptions outside of the HuāDōng corpus. Below I adduce an example from another set of royal family divinations that date approximately to the middle years of Wǔ Dīng’s reign.
HéJí 22258: 32
丙午貞：子。
丙午貞：啟。
丙午貞：啟弟。
丙午貞：婦。
丙午貞：多婦亡疾。
丙午貞：多臣亡疾。
On day Bǐngwǔ tested: Our lord.
On day Bǐngwǔ tested: Qǐ.
On day Bǐngwǔ tested: Qǐ’s younger brother.
On day Bǐngwǔ tested: Wife.
On day Bǐngwǔ tested: The Many Wives will not have sickness.
On day Bǐngwǔ tested: The Many Servants will not have sickness.
“This set of divinations was made on the same day for different members of a family. Based on our knowledge of divination records of this type, the family members who received the most concern are the head of the family, Zi子, his important kin member Qǐ (also called Zǐ Qǐ “lord Qǐ”) and Qǐ’s younger brother, together with Zǐ’s spouse, and various other ladies and servants.” 33
As shown by the examples above, 23/64 (36%) instances of HuāDōng Type B test divinations come from just two sets and total five pieces. In the remaining 41 instances, the names that occur along with the word zhēn are mostly the head of the family (Zǐ 子 “our lord”) and other important family members. Yet because oracular scribes wrote both left to right and right to left, it remains uncertain in which direction these inscriptions are to be read, as they only consist of two words. For instance in the reconstructed set 78–464 cited above, not knowing that the latter were abbreviations of the former might lead one to read 貞伭 in the opposite direction, as 伭貞, and thus interpret Xuán as the name of the diviner, when, in fact, he was the subject of the test divination statement. 34
Considering HéJí 22258, what we have with at least 19 divinations, 205-349-441, was a series of test divinations done on the same day for members and servicemen of the family. Knowing that Zǐ 子 was the appellation used in reference to the head of the family, there was also mention of his spouse, his mother, and two of his children. The divination set was therefore likely made in response to an urgency of some kind. In considering an antecedent, I suggest that the most likely candidate is the pair of divinations recorded at the top left and right sides (hyoplastron) of 349 (Fig 1):
HuāDōng 349
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
HuāDōng 349
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
HuāDōng 349
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
子有鬼夢，亡憂。一 （1） 子夢，丁亡憂。一 （2）
Our lord had a dreadful dream; (he) will have nothing ominous. 1
Our lord dreamt; His Highness will have nothing ominous.1
While the details of the “dreadful dream” (guǐ mèng 鬼夢) remain unstated, 35 it seems plausible that a nightmare had by the master of the house led diviners to make a sequence of divinations about other ‘implicated’ members of the family including the king, 36 the protagonist’s father. Comparable examples occur in accounts inscribed on HuāDōng 113, which I shall present in full as Case 1 below, and in Wǔ Dīng’s divinations, for instance:
HéJí 17383 貞：王夢，多子憂。
Tested: His Majesty dreamt; the Many Children 37 (will have something) ominous.
In summary, and although there are other conceivable explanations, I suggest understanding the abbreviated test divinations on the set 205-349-441 as being about whether a group of family members and servicemen would meet misfortune because of a nightmare. 38
5 Case Studies and New Readings of Selected HuāDōng Test Divinations
The following six case studies intend to illustrate how divination statements introduced by the word test differed from those where it is absent; and how test divinations added complexity to the decision-making process. The first case shows the ratio and percentage of test divination statements versus non-test divination statements on two intact pieces that were cracked and inscribed densely. The rest of the cases show how test divinations functioned to vouch for the correctness of a statement.
Case 1: HuāDōng 113 and HuāDōng 3
HuāDōng 113 (Fig 2) consists of 28 divination records, and HuāDōng 3 (Fig 3) consists of 17 divination records. 39 3/28 (11%) divination statements inscribed on HuāDōng 113 were explicitly marked as test divinations (outlined and numbered in Fig 2), while just 1/17 (5.9%) divination statements inscribed on HuāDōng 3 were explicitly marked as test divinations (outlined and numbered in Fig 3). The form of the four test divinations on the two shells are basically the same, in that they all concern whether certain people will die, encounter harm or misfortune, or will have something unfavorable happen to them more generally. In the inscriptions on HuāDōng 113, the subjects of the test divination statements were the protagonist, Zǐ, and a group of men called the “Many Governors” (duō yǐn 多尹), 40 while on HuāDōng 3, it was “the sick”. The divination codas were wáng hài 亡害 “nothing harmful”, wáng yōu亡憂 “nothing ominous”, wáng bù ruò 亡不若 “nothing unfavorable”, and bù sǐ 不死 “will not die”. As mentioned, test divinations were often posed in the negative mode to get the positive result that the diviner was seeking.
HuāDōng 113; test divinations outlined and numbered
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
HuāDōng 113; test divinations outlined and numbered
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
HuāDōng 113; test divinations outlined and numbered
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
HuāDōng 3; the single test divination outlined and numbered
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
HuāDōng 3; the single test divination outlined and numbered
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
HuāDōng 3; the single test divination outlined and numbered
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
Most of the divination statements on HuāDōng 113 were not dated, and the ones that do contain dates appear to have been more important than the ones with dates omitted. The pair of test divinations (12)-(13) (Fig 2, numbers 1–2), made on day 3/10, Bǐng, were in response to a series of three divination statements, (10)(11)(14), made the day before. The divinations made on day 2/10, Yǐ, provide important background information, as they make it known that the king had a nightmare in advance of an upcoming hunt. Divinations (15)-(19), in response, focused on ritual measures to be taken, from the perspective and advantage of the king’s son, to ensure the safety and well-being of the participants:
113：（10）乙卜：丁有鬼夢，亡憂。一
（11） 丁有鬼夢，燮在田。一
（14） 多左在田，肩若。一
（12）丙卜，貞：多尹亡憂。一
（13） 貞：多尹亡害。一
Divined on day Yǐ: His Highness had a dreadful dream. There is nothing ominous.
His Highness had a dreadful dream. There will be an attack in the fields. 1
(With) much perversion in the fields, (we) will be able to effect a compliance. 41 1
Divined on day Bǐng, tested: The Many Governors will have nothing ominous. 1
Tested: The Many Governors will have no harm. 1
I have selected these two shells as an initial case as they serve a good introduction into the HuāDōng inscriptions more broadly. In the combined number of 45 accounts on both shells, we do not see instances of large sequences of test divinations like what we encounter in concurrent Diviner Bīn and Diviner Lì group divinations. 42 The closest we have in the HuāDōng inscriptions to anything like that are the three interrelated test divinations on HuāDōng 102 cited earlier. A simple visual inspection of the inscriptions on the shells HuāDōng 3 and HuāDōng 113 attest to a procedural difference between divinations introduced by the word zhēn and those divinations without it.
Applying Nivison’s “sound methodology”, the question that must be asked is: Why would one assume that the word zhēn should be read as though it were present in the additional 89% of the divinations on HuāDōng 113 and the 94% of the divinations on HuāDōng 3 when it is clearly absent?
The following cases demonstrate how divinations with and without zhēn worked together to form a basic two-step procedure of making HuāDōng divination.
Case 2: HuāDōng 446
There are 28 divination accounts on this nearly intact and densely inscribed shell and just two are marked as test divinations. One is divination (20) (Fig 4; (1)), to be discussed in the first part of this case study, and the second is divination (8) (Fig 4; (2)), made earlier the same week on day 2/10, to be discussed in the second part of this case study.
HuāDōng 446; test divinations outlined and numbered
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
HuāDōng 446; test divinations outlined and numbered
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
HuāDōng 446; test divinations outlined and numbered
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
Part I: 446.15-21
446：（18）己卜：
牝。一
（15）己卜：叀（惠）牝妣庚。二
（16）豭一。[用]。三
（17）歲（劌）妣庚豭一。[一]
（19）歲（劌）妣庚豭一。二
（21）歲（劌）妣庚一豭。三
（20）己卜，貞：歲（劌）卜亡吉，亡憂。一
Divined on day Jǐ…cow. 1
Divined on day Jǐ: It should be a cow (to) Ancestress Gēng. 2
One boar. [Used]. 3
Chop-cut as a sacrifice 43 to Ancestress Gēng, one boar. [1]
Chop-cut as a sacrifice (to) Ancestress Gēng, one boar. 2
Chop-cut as a sacrifice (to) Ancestress Gēng, one boar. 3
Divined on day Jǐ, tested: (As for) the divination cracks about chop-cutting as a sacrifice, there is nothing auspicious; nothing ominous. 1
Dates on this nearly intact shell span nine days, starting with the first day of the week and continuing through day 9/10. Divinations were made on the first three days of the week (1–3/10), continued again three days later for two consecutive days (6–7/10), and then continued again two days later (day 9/10). I have made a few emendations to the Editors’ original sequence by moving (21) up and placing it in between (19) and (20) and placing (18) ahead of (16)(17). This is because from the crack numbers and parallel content we can deduce that (17)(19)(21) were a set, and that (20) was a test made in response, to check it. I have moved (18) up in the sequence because it appears to fit neatly ahead of (15) (the crack numbers are then in sequence and the sacrificial animal is the same), and it also allows (17)(19)(21) to be kept together.
This sequence of divinations concerns plans for sacrifice to a female ancestor with a Gēng-day temple name, which means that this ancestor, at a minimum, received worship on Gēng, day 7/10 of each week. The word bǐ 妣 means that this female was at least two generations ascending from the perspective of the master of the house, Zǐ. The divinations dated Jǐ, day 6/10, were made the day prior to this fixed, weekly ritual event. As I alluded to earlier, scribes, in recording divination, frequently maintained the manner of using one preface to cover or to be read into subsequent divination accounts in their proximity. This is the situation with (16)(17)(19) and (21).
Divination about rites and sacrifice for ancestor worship are the most frequently-occuring type of oracle bone account. For weekly ritual events, divination was often started in advance of the day of the event and concerned the participants, the menu, activities, location, and the time of its commencement. 44 A key issue in setting the menu was what animal to kill, its particulars (like color and size), and the quantity to be offered. The divinations made on day Jǐ were part of setting the agenda for worship and offerings dedicated to the protagonist’s grandmother.
The first three divinations, (17)(19)(21), form a microset. This can be detected from the crack numbers, 1,2,3, written next to their associated divination cracks. These divinations only concerned the type of animal to sacrifice. A cow was suggested in the first two divinations with no result recorded. The final divination in the set then suggested a different animal-type, one boar, for which the diviner got a result; the judgment yòng 用 ‘use’ was recorded just below the transverse crack to mark it. 45
Next, and working off the result, a second microset of three divinations applied the now-determined sacrificial animal into a more refined statement. This included the method of how the animal would be sacrificed, the quantity to be offered, and the recipient. In three attempts the diviner did not meet with a result (at least not a positive one), which seemingly caused concern and demanded additional attention. The sacrificial event was fixed for the following day and the diviner, under a heightened degree of urgency, needed to know, more surely, if and how to proceed.
The subject of divination (20) is the phrase “guì bǔ 劌卜” ‘the divination cracks about chop-cutting as a sacrifice’. It is, unequivocally, an anaphoric reference to the three guì-劌 divinations immediately preceding it. 46 The two microsets as a unified sequence thus present a prime case to illustrate the following three interconnected procedures of decision-making on the topic of ancestor sacrifice:
- 1. Non-test divinations made in an initial stage of planning eventually produced a judgment. In divination utterances like these—that is ones still probing, discovering, and guessing—the modal word huì 叀（惠）, indicting a subjective choice, put focus on the noun that followed it. It seems important to note that in the HuāDōng inscriptions test divination statements never used huì 叀（惠）.
- 2. The application of a judgment into a second interrelated set of divinations, this time more detailed, on the same topic.
- 3. A test divination was inserted into the process when a diviner did not meet with a result; this was done as a verification and to determine, more surely, the proper course of action.
Part ii: 446.1–9
446:（1）甲卜：乙歲（劌）牡妣庚。 一
（2）甲卜：乙歲（劌）牡妣庚。 二
（3）甲卜：子有心殺妣庚。
（4）甲卜：子疾。一
（5）甲卜：子首疾亡延。一二
（6）甲卜：子其往囗，子首亡延。一
（7）乙卜：弜（勿）巳速丁。 二
（8）乙卜：入（納）胵丁。鼑：又（有）肉。 一
（9）乙卜：其歲（劌）牡母、祖丙。一
Divined on day Jiǎ: On day Yǐ, chop-cut a bull as a sacrifice (to) Ancestress Gēng. 1
Divined on day Jiǎ: On day Yǐ, chop-cut a bull as a sacrifice (to) Ancestress Gēng. 2
Divined on day Jiǎ: Our lord, having the heart (to do so), 47 will make a killing as a sacrifice (to) Ancestress Gēng.
Divined on day Jiǎ: Our lord will sicken. 1
Divined on day Jiǎ: Our lord’s headache(s) will not persist. 12
Divined on day Jiǎ: If our lord goes…our lord’s head[ache(s)] will not persist. 1
Divined on day Yǐ: Do not stop from inviting His Highness. 2
Divined on day Yǐ: Will contribute the bull’s stomach (to) His Highness. Tested: Will have meat. 1
Divined on day Yǐ: Should chop-cut a bull as a sacrifice (to) Mother (and)Ancestor Bǐng. 1
This sequence of nine divinations made over a two-day period concerns various issues: preparation for an upcoming sacrifice to Ancestress Gēng on day 7/10; Zǐ’s health and well-being; sacrifice to two ancestors on day 3/10. The single test divination seems most reasonably explained as part of the planning for Ancestress Gēng’s day of worship. The king’s son, Zǐ, planning to invite his father, the king, was set to present him with the stomach of a slaughtered bull to be sacrificed at the event. How to read yòu ròu又肉 in the test divination, however, is uncertain. Equally unclear is who the subject was, but a default assumption is that it was Zǐ “our lord”. It is straightforward to take yòu as a verb and ròu as its direct object. 48 In the HuāDōng inscriptions, a frequently occuring direct object of yòu 又 is aromatic ale, chàng 鬯. 49 In these instances, I read yòu as writing the existential verb, yǒu 有 ‘have’, as in the early song lyrics jūnzǐ yǒu jiǔ 君子有酒 “The lord-son has ale”. 50 The test divination seems plausibly explained in the context of participants feasting on the day of the upcoming ritual event.
As with HuāDōng 3, that only two divination accounts out of 28 contain the word zhēn ‘test’ is reason enough to suspect that the divination accounts that included this technical term were different, procedurally, from the others without it. In this case, we can discern precisely how test divination functioned within an integral set.
Case 3: hyz 181.32-35
This shell is nearly intact and was both densely cracked and inscribed. There is a total of 35 divination accounts and just one contains the word zhēn (Fig 5, outlined). The function of zhēn in the divination account that does have it is again discernible when read in sequence with the divinations immediately preceding it on the same shell:
HuāDōng 181; test divination outlined and numbered
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
HuāDōng 181; test divination outlined and numbered
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
HuāDōng 181; test divination outlined and numbered
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
181: (34) 叀（惠）豕于子癸。一
(32) 歲（劌）子癸小
。一
(33) 歲（劌）子癸小
。二
(35) 小
卜不吉，貞：亡憂。妣庚用。一
It should be a pig to Child Guǐ. 51 1
Chop-cut as a sacrifice (to) Child Guǐ, small pen-raised sheep. 1
Chop-cut as a sacrifice (to) Child Guǐ, small pen-raised sheep. 2
Divination cracks about the small pen-raised sheep have not been auspicious. Tested: There is nothing ominous. Used (as sacrifice to) Ancestress Gēng. 52 1
I have reordered the Editors’ sequence by moving (34) up ahead of (32) because (32)(33) and (35) quite obviously formed an integral unit. The placement of divination (35) in the upper corner of the right hyoplastron (前右甲) is far removed from the divinations proceeding it, which are located at the right and left sides in the lower area of the hypoplastron (后甲). The crack made for divination (35) was made in the same spot as the test divination made on HuāDōng 446 (divination (21); Fig 4). (35) was also set off by ‘boundary’ lines which demarcated it from other cracks and divination accounts in its immediate proximity. 53 The examples from HuāDōng 446 and HuāDōng 181 perhaps suggest a preference on behalf of of the HuāDōng diviners in choosing to crack specific hollows on a shell—like a gameboard—to get a desired result.
There are different opinions as to the orientation of (35). Fig 6 illustrates the Editors’ suggested orientation alongside of Jiǎng Yùbīn’s revised orientation, which I support.
54
A comparison between the orientation of this inscription and HuāDōng 113.17 (Fig 6(C)) makes it certain that the divination account started with the words “small pen-raised sheep” and that “divination about the small-pen raised sheep has not been auspicious” was a complete sentence preceding the word “test” and the brief divination statement immediately after it. The information rerecorded before the word “test” was precisely the information that led to the test divination. The sentence 小
卜不吉 is comparable to the sentence 歲（劌）卜亡吉亡憂 (HuāDōng 446.20) cited previously. The words before bǔ卜are the topic and bǔ卜, in this case, functions as a noun, ‘divination’ or ‘divination cracks’. Instances of this type of noun phrase occur in Shāng oracular inscriptions outside of the HuāDōng corpus.
55
(A) Editors’ orientation (B) Revised orientation (C) HuāDōng 113.17
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
(A) Editors’ orientation (B) Revised orientation (C) HuāDōng 113.17
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
(A) Editors’ orientation (B) Revised orientation (C) HuāDōng 113.17
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
The phrase xún zhēn 旬貞 ‘upcoming-week test’, or ‘test about the upcoming week’, on HuāDōng 430 is also comparable:
430：（1）旬貞亡多子憂。一
Testing the (upcoming) week: There will nothing ominous (for any of) the Many Children. 1
There are not any other occurences in the HuāDōng oracular inscriptions of divination made for the upcoming week, like the kind seen throughout all periods of Ānyáng divination for the kings. These divinations, as a rule, were tests made on the last day of the week and couched in a negative mode: 貞：旬亡憂 “Tested: In the (upcoming) week, there will be nothing ominous.” Scribes who recorded these divinations, on occasion, did so by abbreviating the coda so that it only said: [干支]貞：旬 “[date] + test + in the (upcoming) week”. As with the HuāDōng Type B test divinations discussed earlier, diviners, and readers, 56 knew how to understand this economical shorthand.
Case 4: HuāDōng 61–62 (or: HuāDōng 61recto/verso)
61：（1）癸卯卜，亞奠（鄭）貞：子占曰：“
（服）”，用。
（2）癸卯卜，亞奠（鄭）貞：子占曰：“終卜”，用。
62：(1) 
（服）。
Divined on day Guǐmǎo, Yà-officer 57 Zhèng tested: Our lord read the crack and said, “Obey it”. Use (this). 1
Divined on day Guǐmǎo, Yà-officer Zhèng tested: Our lord read the crack and said, “Put an end to the divination.” Use (this). 1
“Obey (it)”.
While the word signified by the graph 
has not been determined with certainty,
58
and there remains disagreement about how to parse and understand the two occurences of the word yòng用 ‘use’—the divination procedure seems straightforward.
59
An outstanding issue is the lack of context and perspective about the prognostication (i.e., the content after the words zhān yuē 占曰“read the crack and uttered” and before yòng, as per the punctuation in the citation above); as HuāDōng 61 does not appear to have been part of a larger set, this set of divinations cannot be synchronized with others in the corpus, which means that a timeline of events cannot be reconstructed. We do not know anything about the previous divination that led Zǐ to make the declarations restated on this oracle bone.
The two test divinations on the recto side made by Zhèng, a high-ranking military officer (Yà) in the close confidence of the family head, 60 checked which of the conflicting predictions made by his lord was the right course of action. The single word on the verso was presumably the answer, as the graph 𦨈 matches with its occurence in the first divination statement. Zǐ’s first prediction was deemed to be correct. We just do not know by whom.
What we have here is a divination about divination. Two test divinations verified the result of a previous divination series out of which came a conflicting prognostication. Divinations of this kind, although relatively understudied due to their complexity, occur quite frequently in the Shāng oracular inscriptions. 61 An inscribed ox bone from among Diviner Bīn’s divination records, HéJí 94, is a prime example. 62
Inconsistent predictions from the mouth of the divination practice’s benefactor, Zǐ, also occur elsewhere in the HuāDōng inscriptions. The following pair of divinations on HuāDōng 173 is a prime example:
173：（2）丙申卜：[丁]囗翌 。子占曰：其賓，孚。一
（3）丙申卜。子占曰：亦叀（惠）
（兹）孚，亡賓。 一
Divined on day Bǐngshēn: [His Highness]…Yì-rite. Our lord read the crack and said, “Trust that (he) is likely to host.”
Divining on day Bǐngshēn. Our lord read the crack and said, “It should also be this that is trusted. There will not be a hosting ceremony.”
This pair of divinations about whether the king would host one of the major seasonal ritual events produced another conflicting prediction. 63 What we can deduce through a corpus-based approach to the inscriptions is that Zǐ anticipated, but was unsure (hence the modal adverb qí 其), if the king would arrive (in time?) to host the event, but needed an alternative plan in case, in the end, he did not. 64 Divinatory circumstances like these would, theoretically, have led to a divination about divination, as per HuāDōng 61.
Case 5: Jíyì 561 + HuāDōng 123
Jíyì 561 is an inscribed oracle bone fragment discovered outside of Pit H3. 65 The fragment, carrying two divinations made on the same day, is from theentoplastron (zhōng jiǎ 中甲) and can be securely rejoined with HuāDōng 123 (Fig 7), carrying three divination accounts made, presumably, the following day. 66 None of the three divinations accounts on the sparsely inscribed HuāDōng 123 contain the word zhēn.
Jíyì 561 + HuāDōng 123
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
Jíyì 561 + HuāDōng 123
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
Jíyì 561 + HuāDōng 123
Citation: Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26670755-01010012
The inscriptions on Jíyì 561 say:
不允至一。 庚申卜，曰己 67 其至艱。 貞：其允。 一
It is not, in truth, going to reach this point. 1 Divined on day Gēngshēn: It was said “On a Jǐ day, there is likely a (risk) reaching the point of affliction.” Tested: It is likely, in truth. 1
The orientation and layout of the inscription written on the right side of the entoplastron wrapping around a single divination crack confirms that it was a single, intact account. The two divination accounts in the entoplastron were thus an antithetical pair. What we have yet again is a test divination, couched in positive and negative modes, that wanted to verify if some sort of trouble would arrive. The function of the test, in my reading, was to check the utterance, perhaps a divination statement made previously, 68 declaring/predicting that affliction would arrive on a Jǐ day (6/10). Since Jǐ is the day before Gēng (7/10), and as the divination was dated Gēngshēn, perhaps, and as a guess, trouble was anticipated on Jǐwèi, the day before, but never arrived. The diviner made a test divination the next day to recheck the validity of the statement. As one of the Jǐ days, Jǐwèi, had just passed, the test divination seemingly wanted to know if they should be concerned about future Jǐ days as well.
Divination accounts in the form “Date + bǔ 卜 ‘divined’ + an utterance 曰 + zhēn ‘tested’” also occur outside of the HuāDōng corpus. HéJí 20070, an early Diviner Duī group inscription, is a prime example: 69
癸卯卜，王曰耑其
，貞：余勿呼延鞀。由曰：吉。其呼鞀。
Divined on day Guǐmǎo: His Majesty said, “Duān should serve in attendance.”Tested: I should not call to continue playing the rattle-drum(s). Yóu said, “Auspicious. Would that (His Majesty) call to play the rattle-drum(s).”
The word huà 
(*ocm kôiɁ), read as writing the same word signified by guǒ 果 (*ocm kôiɁ), means ‘to serve’ (shì 侍).
70
I suggest that the verb’s object was the king. If based on Shāng bronze inscriptions commissioned by donors who participated in musical performances attended by the kings, assuming Duān provided flawless service, Wǔ Dīng would have encouraged him with a reward. The first-person pronoun yú 余 in the test divination implies that it was the king who performed it.
71
The king made a test divination either to affirm the result of a divination made by him previously or to finalize plans for a larger event. On this occasion, one of the king’s diviners, Yóu, contradicting the king’s proposal, determined the proper course of action to be the opposite. HéJí 21386 contains the king’s alternative proposal and the one endorsed by Diviner Yóu:
癸卯卜，王曰耑其
。貞：余呼延。九月。不。
Divined on day Guǐmǎo, His Majesty said, “Duān should serve in attendance”.
Dated on the same day of the month, the two accounts undoubtedly were a pair. A statement first couched in the positive mood with a judgment about the crack in the negative implies that HéJí 21386 was made first.
6 Conclusion
Discernible and logical patterns of language in the HuāDōng oracular inscriptions lead to a more refined and nuanced understanding of the complexity, and mentality, of Shāng decision-making. The inscriptions make it certain that there was a technical difference between divination statements introduced by the prefatory zhēn 貞 ‘test’ and those that were not. Statistics strongly contradict a generalization accepted in the field that all divination statements were tests and recommend abandoning a practice of systematically reading the word zhēn as being present in a divination account even though it was absent. By constructing a typology and establishing it through annotated case studies, we can see that test divinations in the HuāDōng practice functioned to get a definite result, as opposed to non-test divinations which could still probe, discover, and guess (i.e., divine). Test divinations mainly validated previous divination results, checked people’s statements (or what the divination practice anticipated people would say), verified the health and well-being of animate objects, and determined, as a definitive step, the proper course of action.
While I acknowledge that the methodological limitation of this study can only apply for sure to the divination accounts in the pit under review, the consistency of my findings—showing a distinction between divination records on intact individual pieces and in integral sets related to the primary divination and the ‘test’ divination—suggests a more widespread and more profound phenomenon. Conclusions derived from this research should stimulate a more acute sense of how to read oracular inscriptions from other divination groups as well. We have new evidence to know more about the development of divination as a royal institution at Ānyáng during the reign of king Wǔ Dīng.
My concentration in this paper has been to refine how to read the HuāDōng oracular inscriptions by looking carefully into integral and emic features of the HuāDōng divination practice that generated it. An examination of the complex process of HuāDōng decision-making complements a comprehensive study of the scribes who worked collectively with the diviners. 73 It was, afterall, the scribes who were committed to keeping historical records accurate. 74
This research output has been generously supported by the Hong Kong rgc, Early Career Scheme (Reference Number 22608419), project title: “The Language of the Huayuanzhuang East Oracle Bone Inscriptions”. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and corrections.
Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ 殷墟花園莊東地甲骨, ed. Zhōngguó shēhuì kēxuéyuàn kǎogǔyánjiūsuǒ 中國社會科學院考古研究所(ed.), 6 volumes (Kūnmíng: Yúnnán Rénmín chūbǎnshè, 2003). Adam C. Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East: Translated with an Introduction and Commentary (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781501505294/html. ‘Large fragments’ means a half-shell or greater.
Following the reign dates provided by Chén Mèngjiā 陳夢家, “Yīn-Shāng yǔ Xià-Zhōu de niándaì wèntí” 殷商與夏周的年代問題, Lìshǐ yánjiū 歷史研究 2 (1955), 73–74; see too David N. Keightley, Sources of Shang History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), Table 37.
This count includes divination inquiries preceded by zhēn, as well as five cases where a divination inquiry is covered by it. What this refers to is a complimentary pair (duìzhēn對貞) of divinations on the same bone and whose hollows and inscriptions are usually symetrically across from one another. The first divination record of the pair has a preface that includes zhēn while the complimentary, second divination omits it. In the HuāDōng inscriptions, there are five pairs where the initial divination of a pair includes zhēn but the second one does not. These five pairs are: 241.11-12*, 275 + 517.1-2*, 321.5-6*, 373.1-2*, 431.2-3*. The numbers marked with * occur as the second divination of the pair, all concern death, and importantly, were a result that the benefactor, as voiced by his diviners, did not want to happen, i.e., the subject of the divination will die.
See, for instance, the opening sentence of Jao Tsung-i, “‘Zhēn’ de zhéxué” 貞的哲學, in Jao Tsung-i èrshí shìjì xuéshù wénjí (Běijīng: Zhōngguó Rénmín Dàxué chūbǎnshè, 2009), 4.92–109. The now frequently encountered convention amongst specialists to generalize all Shāng and Western Zhōu period divination statements as zhēn cí貞辭 takes this even further; see Lǐ Xuéqín 李學勤, Zhōu Yì sùyuán 周易溯源 (Chéngdū: Bā-Shǔ shūshè, 2006), 184. While there is no question that divination statements introduced by zhēn 貞 were test divinations, in the same turn, statements not introduced by zhēn but by other technical words could then also be termed fēi zhēn cí 非貞辭 ‘non-test statements’. A prefatory formula like bǔ yuē卜曰 “divining, uttered” could then also be termed bǔ yuē cí卜曰辭 ‘divination utterances’. Although a proper statistical analysis awaits, most Western Zhōu oracle-bone statements, based on what has been published to date, were not introduced by the word zhēn ‘test’; “date + bǔ 卜” or “date + bǔ yuē 卜曰” occur far more frequently.
Divination made either by the Shāng kings or by professional diviners on their behalf comprise approximately 97% of the oracular inscriptions. The remaining 3% percent are divination sanctioned by people other than the king, and amongst this group the largest subset is from members of the royal family. Wáng Yùnzhì 王蘊智, Yīn Shāng jiǎgǔwén yánjiū 殷商甲骨文研究 (Běijīng: Kēxué chūbǎnshè, 2010), 142, calculates the number of inscribed oracle bone pieces to be 73,000+: 59300+ from Xiǎotún North 小屯北: 3500+ (Duī 𠂤,including Duī 𠂤-Bīn賓 and Duī 𠂤-Lì歷 “transition” types)), 39200+ (Bīn 賓), 5100+ (Chū 出), 2600+ (Hé 何), 7900+ (Huáng黃); 10800+ from Xiǎotún South 小屯南: 5300+ (Lì 歷), 5400+ (Unnamed無名). 2200+ from royal families (wáng shì 王室) and others, that is, not made by the kings or on their behalf (feī wáng bǔ cí 非王卜辭). In overviews of the characteristics of diviner groups at Ānyáng, handbooks routinely list a variety of prefatory formulas preceding the divination statements. See for instance Lǐ Xuéqín 李學勤 and Péng Yùshāng 彭裕商, Yīnxū jiǎgǔ fēnqī yánjiū 殷虛甲骨分期研究 (Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1996); Huáng Tiānshù 黃天樹, Yīnxū wáng bǔ cí dé fēnlèi yǔ duàndài 殷墟王卜辭的分類與斷代 (Běijīng: Kēxué, 2007); Wáng Yùnzhì, Yīn Shāng jiǎgǔwén yánjiū.
Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 19–20 n42.
Divination records of the Diviner Duī 
group: Duī, Fú 扶*, Sháo勺, and Yóu 由 (Jao Tsung-i reads it Yè 葉) are Ānyáng’s earliest (to date). The dataset totals 830+ pieces and can be divided into two subsets, Duī A and Duī B, based on orthographic manners. Duī A is the earlier of the two (Wǔ Dīng’s early period), only lists Fú and Wǔ Dīng as diviners, and does not record ‘formal’ prognostications (i.e., a statement introduced by zhān 占); inscriptions are characterized by a bold handwriting in large, fat, circular strokes that resembles brush script. Duī B lists five diviners (the four people mentioned above + the king), records ‘formal’ prognostications, and the inscriptions are characterized by small and blockish handwriting. A preliminary tabulation, from 276/830+ pieces, shows the following distribution of non-test divinations to test divinations: Duī A (with a diviner’s name in the preface and excluding the king’s divinations): 44 pieces/58 individual divinations records/3+ test divinations=7% Duī B (with a diviner’s name in the preface and excluding the king’s divinations): 232 pieces/246 individual divination records/52+test divinations= 21%. Individual diviner totals are as follows (Pieces/individual divination records/test divinations):
-
Diviner Fú 137/156/12 (8%): Duī A 44/58/3 (5%); Duī B 93/98/9 (9%)
-
Diviner Duī 68/83/30+ (36%)
-
Diviner Sháo 33/38/8 (5%)
-
Diviner Yóu 23/27/5 (5%)
The percentage of test divinations from Duī is only just higher than 1 out of 3. The percentage of test divinations from Fú, Sháo, and Yóu corresponds to the percentage of test divinations made by the HuāDōng diviners. From these statistics, we may conclude that Diviner Duī’s practice exemplifies the development of royal divination as an institution at Ānyáng as Wǔ Dīng grew in power and authority.
Jao Tsung-i, Yīndài zhēnbǔ rénwù tōngkǎo 殷代貞卜人物通考 (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 1959), 70. Jao poignantly called attention to the fact that divination charges introduced solely by the prefatory word 卜far outnumber those introduced by 貞 can entirely be supported by the HuāDōng inscriptions, but another part of his findings, that it was a well-practiced tendency to omit or abbreviate 貞, as well as his conclusion that 卜could be used to approximate 貞 seems inaccurate. The use of the word “systematic” is intended to account for scribal mistakes and inconsistencies, which occur in scribal practice from the ancient world more broadly.
David N. Keightley, “Theology and the Writing of History”, in These Bones Shall Rise Again: Selected Writing on Early China (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2014), 207–228.
Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 17–20. A.C. Schwartz, “How to Read an Oracle Bone from Huayuanzhuang East Pit H3”, Bulletin of the Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology 7 (July 2020), 39–90.
David S. Nivison, “The ‘Question’ Question”. Early China 14 (1989). I am using a reprint in Jiǎgǔ wénxiàn jíchéng 甲骨文獻集成, comp. Sòng Zhènháo 宋鎮豪, Duàn Zhìhóng 段志洪 et al. (Chéngdū: Sìchuān dàxué chūbǎnshè, 2001), 18.384c-387a.
Bernhard Karlgren, Grammata Serica Recensa (Stockholmml: Musuem of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1972), #834g-i.
Nivison, “The ‘Question’ Question”, 386d.
Nivison, “The ‘Question’ Question”, 386d, explains that the line 我二人共貞 in the Shàng shū “Luò gào” has to be talking about making an official divination to certify the oracle results mentioned preceding it, i.e., the results of the Duke of Zhōu’s divinations made while abroad to determine the location of the new eastern capital during King Chéng’s reign.
Serruys, “Studies in the Language of the Shang Oracle Inscriptions”, 1–3. Also cited in Ken-ichi Takashima (with translations up to plastron #259 by Paul L-M. Serruys), Studies of Fascicle Three of Inscriptions from the Yin Ruins. Volume I: General Notes, Text and Translations. Volume II: New Paleographical and Philological Commentaries (Taipei: Institute of History and Philology, Academica Sinica Special Publications Nos. 107A, 107B, 2010), 1.22–25.
Bernhard Karlgren, Grammata Serica Recensa, #834a; Yú Xǐngwú 于省吾, Jiǎgǔ wénzì shìlín 甲骨文字釋林 (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1979), 218–219.
Paul L-M. Serruys, “Studies in the Language of the Shang Oracle Inscriptions”, T’oung Pao 60 (1974), 1–3; Jao Tsung-i 饒宗頤, Yīndài zhēnbǔ rénwù tōngkǎo, 70–71; Keightley, Working for His Majesty, 359–360; Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 79n11; Zhāng Yùjīn 張玉金, “Jiǎgǔwén zhōng de ‘zhēn’ hé Yìjīng zhōng de ‘zhēn’” 甲骨文中的“貞”和《易經》中的“貞”, Gǔjí zhěnglǐ yánjiū xuékān 2002.2: 6–11.
David S. Nivison, “The ‘Question’ Question”, 387a; Nivison, “Supplement to the “The ‘Question’ Question”—British Museum Scapula and British Museum Library Deer Horn”, in The Nivison Annals (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 17–21; Adam C. Schwartz, “The Meaning and Function of the word zhen 貞 on the Genealogy of Ni Lineage Patriarchs”, Jiǎgǔwén yǔ Yīn Shāng shǐ 甲骨文與殷商史 6 (2016).
Cited and discussed on page 28.
I conservatively use ‘royal divination’ and not ‘divination’ more broadly due to the sparsity of Shāng divination records produced by or on behalf of people outside of the royal family.
Serruys, “Studies in the Language of the Shang Oracle Inscriptions”, 22, explains that the word bǔ卜means “to apply a firing process to cause cracks in a shell or bone”, but then translates it as a verb, “to ask”; when translating the inscriptions, he understands it functioning as a noun and translates it as “divination” (p23). As a prefatory term in the oracular inscriptions, I understand it as a verb and translate it as “divine”.
For reasons of economy, and in order not to be repetitive, please consult Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, for annotations to the translations presented in the citations that follow, although there are instances in this research paper where I shall test alternative interpretations. The Introduction in The Huayuanzhuang East Oracle Bone Inscriptions provides information about people in the corpus; Appendix 1 provides material details about the shells and bones carrying the inscriptions.
HuāDōng diviners, as a rule, only referred to their patron by the appellation, “Zǐ” 子, which in addition to its primary meaning of ‘child’ was also used in a social context at this time as a designation denoting an eldest son and the head of a family. I use the word ‘lord’ based on an interchange of the terms zǐ and jūn 君 found in Shāng bronze inscriptions, namely the Xiǎozǐ Shěng yǒu 小子省卣 (Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng 5394); see Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 25n58, 28–37.
The identification of 
as writing the same word as the one signified by yōu 憂 ‘worry; anxiety; sorrow’ follows Qiú Xīguī, cited in Hé Jǐngchéng 何景成 ed., Jiǎgǔ wénzì gǔlín bǔbiān 甲骨文字詁林補編 (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 2017), 539–540, 541–545. Alternative readings, less compelling, are huò 禍 ‘misfortune; calamity’ and lì 戾 ‘misfortune; danger; transgression’, as per citations collected in Yú Xǐngwú 于省吾 ed., Jiǎgǔ wénzì gǔlín 甲骨文字詁林 (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1996), 2158–2172; Jiǎgǔ wénzì gǔlín bǔbiān 545–550. All instances of this graph hereafter will be rendered directly with the graph 憂.
Of the so-called ‘disaster’ words that occur in the oracular inscriptions: hài 害 ‘harm’, zāi 災 ‘disaster’, jiù 咎 ‘fault’, lìn 吝 ‘distress; remorse’, huǐ 悔 ‘regret’, jiān 艱 ‘affliction; troubles’, chǐ 齒 ‘difficulties’, yú 虞 ‘upset’, niè 孽 ‘evil’, etc., yōu is by far the most prolific. (Yáo Xiàosuì 姚孝遂 and Xiāo Dīng 肖丁 (eds.), Yīnxū jiǎgǔ kècí lèizuǎn 殷墟甲骨刻辭類纂 (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1989), 827.2–833.2.) Defining it, in a general sense, as ‘ominous’ (or, alternatively, as ‘misfortune’), against its more widely recognized meanings in Classical Chinese, is simply ‘functional’; for my purposes in this paper, it is merely “based on a contextual understanding rather than precise philological analysis”, as per Keightley, Working for His Majesty, 275, 311–315; note that he reads this word as huò 禍 and translates it as ‘ominous’.
As a prelude to a more systematic study, I will say this: HuāDōng 102.1–3 is anomalous among the HuāDōng corpus for its precise information about the mentality of divination. A ‘fault’ observed in the crack of a previous divination about whether an ill person would die (102.2) led to the rise of fear among the participants, and, in turn, to a subsequent ‘test divination’ (102.3) to verify its correctness. The coordination of the words wèi 畏 ‘fear; dread’ (synonymous with jù 懼 etc.) and yōu 憂 (defined in n24) is broadly attested in Classical literature and, perhaps more crucially, in later divination texts. For instance, the “Xì cí” 繫辭 ‘The Appended Statements’ commentary says: 外內使知懼，又明於憂患與故 “The outer (trigram) and inner (trigram) cause (one) to know fear; (the Book of Changes), moreover, makes plain the nature of worry and misery, and the causes of them”; Lǐ Dǐngzuò 李鼎祚 (mid-late Táng), Zhōu Yì jíjiě 周易集解 ‘Collected Explanations of the Zhōu Changes’ (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 2016), 16.486. The hexagram statement “Bǐ’s Dà Zhuàng” 比之大壯 ‘Aligning’s Great Strength’ in Jiāo Gòng’s 焦贛 (mid-late Western Hàn) Yì lín 易林 ‘Forest of Changes’ says: 懼以懷憂 “Fear leads to a bosom of worry”; and the hexagram statement “Shēng zhī Jì jì” 升之既濟 ‘Ascending’s Already Across’ in the Yì lín says: 初憂中懼，終日競競，無悔無虞 “In the beginning worry; by the mid-point fear. Until the end of the day so cautious, there will be no regret and nothing upsetting”; Shàng Bǐnghé 尚秉和 (1870–1950), Jiāo shì Yì lín zhù 焦氏易林注 ‘Commentary to Mr. Jiāo’s Forest of Changes’, in Shàng shì Yì xué cún gǎo jiàolǐ 尚氏易學存稿校理 (Běijīng: Zhōngguó dàbǎikē quánshū chūbǎnshè, 2012), 2.148, 12.825. In the Shìfǎ 筮法 ‘Principles for Milfoil Divination’, a newly discovered 4th century bc manuscript text for the study and use of hexagram divination, ‘worry and fear’ (yōu jù 憂懼) are listed together (on slip 55) as ‘images’ (xiàng 象) of the line-number (yáo 爻) ‘Five’; Qīnghuá Dàxué chūtǔ wénxiàn yánjiū yǔ bǎohù zhōngxīn ed., Qīnghuá Dàxué cáng Zhànguó zhú jiǎn (4) 清華大學藏戰國竹簡(肆) (Shànghǎi: Zhōng-Xī shūjú, 2013). Based on a divination sequence like HuāDōng 102.1–3, and considering the mentality of divination more broadly (for instance as expressed by the author(s) of the “Xì cí” (Zhōu Yì jíjiě 16.480): “As for the one who created the Changes, did he have worry and misery?” 作易者，其有憂患與), the divination coda wáng yōu 亡憂, perhaps more precisely, and more subjectively, means ‘there is no (reason for) worry’/‘there is nothing to be anxious about’.
It is also possible to read this word not as a name but as a verb, ‘continue’, as in, ‘continue’ divining about other people.
An alternative reading is “Offer captives (fú服) as a sacrifice to Elder Sister Gēng”.
Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 2019: 23–24 n57. I shall return to speak to this further below.
Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ 6.1641.
See, for instance, HuāDōng 2.3–4, 75.7, 80.2, 90.8, and 140.2.
Divination accounts on HuāDōng 55 were originally part of a four-shell set that, in addition to HuāDōng 247, also included 255 and 352; see Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 2019: 65 n149, 130–131 n156.
Guō Mòruò 郭沫若 (ed.), Jiǎgǔwén Héjí 甲骨文合集 (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1979–1982). Citations from this collection are abbreviated HéJí.
Jiǎng Yùbīn 蔣玉斌, “Yīnxū Zǐ bǔcí de zhěnglǐ yǔ yánjiū 殷墟子卜辭的整理與研究,” PhD dissertation, Jílín University, 2006, 48.
My sense is that at least some of the remaining 41 instances should also be read “zhēn + Name”. Cf. Nivison, “The ‘Question’ Question”, 386d: “I know of no case of an inscriptions that stops with the word zhen, without a following charge in the inscription. One would expect to find such inscriptions, if zhen just meant ‘makes and evaluates the crack’. Therefore I think we have to assume that zhen denotes an act, necessarily partly mental, that the diviner performs on a divination content expressible in a sentence.” Wáng Yùnzhì, Yīn Shāng jiǎgǔwén yánjiū, 453, among others, takes the divination records that I classify as Type B, including these said 41 divination records, and reading them in a converse orientation, “Name + zhēn”, understands them all as the names of HuāDōng diviners. See Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 24 n57, for a strong rebuttal. Adam D. Smith, “Writing at Anyang: The Role of the Divination Record in the Emergence of Chinese Literacy” (PhD dissertation, ucla, 2008), refers to these inscriptions as “divining the diviner”. He proposes to read the accounts as divination statements, not as prefaces with divination statements omitted, and takes zhēn as a future tense verb, “will divine”, i.e., X will be the diviner. Although zhēn is usually assumed to be a transitive verb, I still find this proposal attractive although I prefer to explain zhēn as “will test/verify/affirm”—said of a previous divination result or person’s statement. The divination statement was not inquiring into who the diviner will be, but rather whether X should make a test divination.
There is one inscription, HuāDōng (hyz) 165.2, that only records the word zhēn and a crack number. Of the four accounts on this piece, three were test divinations. Following the Editors’ sequence, the first divination in the sequence, without a date or other historical information, records only a divination statement that says, 子有夢。唯囗吉。一 “Our lord had a dream. It means…good luck. 1” The second divination in the sequence records only zhēn and a crack number 2. While one explanation might suppose that the divination statement has been omitted (for some reason), it seems plausible that the word zhēn was the divination statement and meant to test divination (1). This presumably led to a third divination, recorded in the form “prefatory zhēn + divination statement + crack number”, that says: 貞：臽，亡艱。一 “Tested: Sunken; there will be no affliction.1” ‘Sunken’ refers either to an image that occurred in the dream, or to a shape of the crack in the shell; the latter sense is part of the technical terminology used in the Warring States manuscript text Bǔ shū 卜書 (*Turtle-Shell Divination Story) in the Shànghǎi Museum Warring States Chǔ Manuscripts. For the text, see Mǎ Chéngyuán 馬承源 ed.-in-chief, Shànghǎi Bówùguǎn cáng Zhànguó Chǔ zhúshū 上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書, vol. 9 (Shànghǎi: Gǔjí chūbǎnshè, 2013), pp. 127–138 (photographs), 289–302 (transcription).
The graph 鬼, writing the word guǐ ‘ghost; demon’, seems best explained as a variant of
(畏), writing the word wèi ‘fear; terror; dread’; see HuāDōng 102.3 cited earlier. Cf. HéJí 17442: 癸未卜，王貞：
（畏）夢。余勿禦 ‘Divined on day Guǐwèi, His Majesty tested: Dreadful dream. I ought not have an exorcism performed.’ Writing the word wèi with the graph 鬼 continues in later script traditions, as evidenced by Warring States manuscripts produced during the 4th century bc. A prime example occurs in a Warring States instantiation of the text Shè mìng 攝命 ‘Charge to Shè’ in the Qīnghuá University Warring States Manuscripts, vol. 8, slips 6, 9, 15, 21. For the text, see Qīnghuá Dàxué chūtǔ wénxiàn yánjiū yǔ bǎohù zhōngxīn ed., Qīnghuá Dàxué cáng Zhànguó zhújiǎn (bā) 清華大學藏戰國竹簡(捌) (Shànghǎi: Zhōng-Xī shūjú, 2018).
The graph dīng丁, which is the ancestral form of dīng 釘 ‘nail’, is to be read as a phonetic loan for the word dǐng ‘crown of the head/forehead’, later signified by 頂, when used as an appellation for a living person. It could refer both to the Shāng king, as it does in HuāDōng 349.2 (‘His Highness’), and to the ‘Head’ of other lineages or organized groups of men; see Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 50–62.
The term duō zǐ 多子 “Many Children”, in this divination made on behalf of the king, means the king’s many children, i.e., the royal children (‘princes’). In HuāDōng 430.1, cited later in this paper, as the patron of the divination was not the king, but one of his adult sons, “many children” either refers to the king’s many children (based on information in the corpus I determine at least twelve including the patron), or, perhaps more likely, to the family head’s many children (I determine that he had four, including one deceased); see Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 31, 63–65.
Cf. Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 34n71.
See Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 79–83 (HuāDōng/hyz 3) and 160–164 (HuāDōng/hyz 113) for transcriptions and annotated translations; Appendix 1 has measurements and other details.
Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 66, calls them the “Many Commanders”.
Jiān 肩 is synonymous with kè 克, as per Shuō wén jiě zì (Zāng Kèhé 臧克和 (ed.), Shuō wén jiě zì xīn ding 說文解字新訂 (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 2002), 7.459); ruò 若, occuring in this statement opposite zuǒ 左 ‘left > contrary; perverse’, is synonymous with shùn 順 ‘compliant; smoothly; go well’ (Zōng Fúbāng 宗福邦, Chén Shìnáo 陳世鐃, and Xiāo Hǎibō 蕭海波 (eds.), Gù xùn huì zuǎn 故訓匯纂 (Běijīng: Shāngwù yìnshūguǎn, 2003), 1915–1916). The meaning of jiān ruò肩若 is thus equivalent to kè shùn 克順 in the phrase kè shùn kè bǐ 克順克俾 “rendering a compliance, effecting a union”; see Shàng shū “Bì mìng 畢命” ‘Charge to Bì’.
See the selection in Wáng Yùnzhì, Yīn Shāng jiǎgǔwén yánjiū, 165–242 (Bīn) and 243–277 (Lì).
Suì 歲 is the ancestral form of guì 劌 ‘cleave; (chop-)cut; dismember; harm’, as per Táng Lán 唐蘭 (1900–1979), Tiānràng gé jiǎgǔ wéncún kǎoshì (Běijīng: Fǔrén dàxué chūbǎnshè, 1939), 30b-31a. That this word was a type of cutting procedure can be verified by the verb + direct object clause guì shèn 歲（劌）裖（脤）“cleave raw meat” (HuāDōng 496.1); see Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 80n17.
Adam Craig Schwartz, “Shang sacrificial animals—Material Documents and Images”, in Animals through Chinese History: Earliest Times to 1911, Dagmar Shäfer, Roel Sterckx, and Martina Siebert eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 20–45.
For a fuller explanation, and defense, of the technical term yòng as a judgment about a divination crack, see Schwartz, “How to Read an Oracle Bone from Huayuanzhuang East Pit H3”, 42, 45–50.
Jiǎng Yùbīn 蔣玉斌, “Shuō Yīnxū bǔcí dé tèshū xùcí” 說殷墟卜辭的特殊敘辭, Chūtǔ wénxiàn yǔ gǔwénzì yánjiū 出土文獻與古文字研究4 (2011), 1–13.
I understand yŏu xīn 有心 in this sentence through a comparison with the same phrase in the lyrics of two songs in the Shījīng ‘Book of Songs’, namely “Qiǎo yán” 巧言 ‘Artful Words’ (Máo 198): 他人有心、予忖度之 ‘What other people have in their hearts, I estimate and measure it’; and Yì 抑 ‘Repressed’ (Máo 256): 民各有心 ‘Of the people, each has a heart of his/her own’. This reading differs drastically from Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 355-356n546, that has “Our lord will have the heart, making the killing for Ancestress Gēng”; my interpretation was based on divination (8) in the sequence that said the stomach of the presumed sacrificial animal was to be contributed to the king. The idea, left unsubstantiated due to a lack of evidence, was that if butchered parts of the sacrificial animal were being given out, Zǐ was planning to take the heart.
Sūn Yàbīng, Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ wénlì yánjiū, 111, reads又 as yòu侑 ‘repay; assist; urge to eat/drink’, but does explain侑肉. When 又 is read as a loan for侑 in the oracular inscriptions, the syntax is usually “又（侑）+ [yú于 ‘to’] + indirect object [ancestor’s name]”. If we were to pursue such a reading, despite this, the inscription would say, “Offer meat as a sacrifice”; Ancestress Gēng would have been the recipient.
See Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 83n29.
The lyrics occur in four songs in the Shījīng.
In the designation “Child Guǐ”, ‘child’ refers to a child of the head of the family; it means that this person died while still a juvenile. ‘Guǐ’ is the day the deceased person received worship and offerings; see Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 38n78, 63.
I follow Sūn Yàbīng, Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ wénlì yánjiū, 112, in reading “Used (them to sacrifice to) Ancestress Geng” as a verification. The small pen-raised sheep were, in the end, given as a sacrifice to Ancestress Geng and not Child Guǐ. Jiǎng Yùbīn, “Shuō Yīnxū bǔcí de tèshū xùcí”, 7–8, alternatively, understands it as part of the charge statement. Cf. HuāDōng (hyz) 286.22.
For a fuller explanation of the concept of boundary lines, and annotated illustrations about how HuāDōng scribes used them, see Schwartz, “How to Read an Oracle Bone from Huayuanzhuang East Pit H3”, 79–85.
Jiǎng Yùbīn, “Shuō Yīnxū bǔcí de tèshū xùcí”, 7–8.
One good example is HéJí 31681: nián bǔ 年卜 “the harvest divination(s)”; jí bǔ 疾卜 “the sickness divination(s)”. In HuāDōng 102.3, cited earlier, bǔ also functions as a noun.
Schwartz, “How to Read an Oracle Bone from Huayuanzhuang East Pit H3”, presents evidence to support that the Huāyuánzhuāng East oracle bone inscriptions were written to be read.
See Keightley, Working for His Majesty, 348–349, for a discussion of this title.
Other suggested readings for 
are fù 
‘repeat’, qián 前 ‘advance; continue’ and xìng 興 ‘inauspicious (!)’; see Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 134 n161. The phrase 𦨈 卜“Obey the divination” occurs on 380.1 and 490.9. I understand “obey” as meaning ‘to follow’; see Hú Hòuxuān 胡厚宣, “Shì zī yòng zī yù” 釋
用
御, rpt. in Jiǎgǔ wénxiàn jíchéng 甲骨文獻集成, comp. Sòng Zhènháo 宋鎮豪, Duàn Zhìhóng 段志洪 et al. (Chéngdū: Sìchuān dàxué chūbǎnshè, 2001), 18:1–5.
Yáo Xuān 姚萱, Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ bǔcí chūbù yánjiū 殷墟花園莊東地甲骨卜辭的初步研 (Běijīng: Xiànzhuāng shūjú, 2006), 54–55, reads yòng as part of the prognostication. Sūn Yàbīng, Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ wénlì yánjiū, 125, reads yòng as the coda of Yà Diàn’s divination statement.
Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 69.
See, for instance, Qiú Xīguī’s discussion of the technical term xí 習 ‘repeat’; Qiú Xīguī 裘錫圭, “Yīnxū jiǎgǔwén ‘huì’ zì bǔ shuō” 殷墟甲骨文“彗”字補說, in Qiú Xīguī xuéshù wénjí 裘錫圭學術文集 (Shànghǎi: Fùdàn Dàxué chūbǎnshè, 2012), 1.422–430.
Qiú Xīguī, “Shì ‘wǒ’” 釋“厄”, in Qiú Xīguī xuéshù wénjí 裘錫圭學術文集, 1.449–460.
Yáo Xuān, Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ bǔcí chūbù yánjiū, 94; Yáo suggests the divination statement in 173.3 has been omitted. Sūn Yàbīng, Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ wénlì yánjiū, 125, offers a different interpretation. She proposes that the prognosticatory statement made by Zǐ in 173.3 ought to end with the word fú 孚 ‘trust; match’ (符合) and was part of the divination statement, while the phrase wáng bīn 亡賓 following it was an unmarked prediction about it. In her opinion, the divination statement was the result of a previous divination. If read this way, the account would be another example of divination about divination. Sūn parses the pair of inscriptions as: (2) 丙申卜：[丁]囗翌 。子占曰：“其賓”。孚。一 // (3) 丙申卜：子占曰：“亦叀（惠）
（兹）孚”。亡賓。 一. As the reader can see from the transcription, Sūn understands 孚 in (2) as a type of verification, meaning that the king, in the end, really did arrive to host. While there remains a dispute about how to fully understand the language of this pair of divinations, more important for my argument here is that commentators agree that there are contradictions.
Cf. HuāDōng (hyz) 480.2: 癸酉卜，在
：丁弗賓祖乙彡（肜）。子占曰：弗其賓。用。一二 “Divined on day Guǐyǒu, at Fù (?): His Highness is not going to host Ancestor Yǐ’s Róng-rite. Our lord read the crack(s) and said, ‘(He) is unlikely to host it.’ Used.12 ” The next divination in the sequence, on the same bone, 480.3, was made on the same day by Jīn 金and stated that the king would not arrive until three days after the event (count inclusive) from hunting abroad. Compared with HuāDōng 480, the subject of the verb bīn in HuāDōng 172.2 would have been the king and not Zǐ or a collective “we”. The word bīn occurs on just two shells (four instances in three accounts). None of the instances in the HuāDōng inscriptions support that anyone besides the king had the authority or ritual status to host an ancestor or an event for one, much less for the major seasonal rituals like Yì 翌and Róng. Bīn in 173.3 is, in our understanding, a noun.
Duàn Zhènměi 段振美, Jiāo Zhìqín 焦智勤, Dǎng Xiāngkuí 黨相魁, and Dǎng Níng 黨寧 eds, Yīnxū jiǎgǔ jíyì: Ānyáng mínjiān cáng jiǎgǔ殷墟甲骨輯佚:安陽民間藏甲骨 (Běijīng: Wénwù, 2008).
Mò Bófēng 莫伯峰, “Jíyì zhōng dé yī bǎn HuāDōng Zǐ bǔcí jíqí zhuīhé”《輯佚》中的一版花東子卜辭及其綴合, http://www.xianqin.org/blog/archives/1439.html, 2009.
Mò Bófēng’s transcription does not identify this graph; Sūn Yàbīng 孫亞冰, Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ wénlì yánjiū, 109, reads it Dīng 丁, day 4/10.
Sūn Yàbīng, Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ wénlì yánjiū, 109–111.
Jiǎng Yùbīn, “Shuō Yīnxū bǔcí de tèshū xùcí”, 5; Sūn Yàbīng, Yīnxū Huāyuánzhuāng dōngdì jiǎgǔ wénlì yánjiū, 109–111.
Lĭ Xuéqín, “Yīn Shāng zhì Zhōu chū de huà yǔ huà chén” 殷商至周初的
與
臣, Yīndū xuékān 殷都學刊2008.3: 13–14. Cf. Shǐ Qiáng pán 史牆盤 (Yīn Zhōu jīnwén jíchéng 10175): 方蠻亡不來
見 ‘Savages from the territories all came to serve and be seen.’ Guǒ 果 is the ancestral form of wǒ 婐 ‘maidservant; manservant’; see Zōng Fúbāng 宗福邦, Chén Shìnǎo 陳世鐃, and Xiāo Hǎibō 蕭海波 (eds.), Gù xùn huì zuǎn, 1080.
Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 28–29, 342 (hyz 410.2), 374 (hyz 475.8–9); Cf. HuāDōng (hyz) 410.2: 壬卜，在
：丁曰余其肇子臣。允。 “Divined on day Rén, at Lái (?): His Highness said ‘I plan to dispense (to) our lord (or: my son) servitors. (His Highness) truly will.”; HuāDōng (hyz) 475.8: 辛亥卜：丁曰余不其往。毋速。“Divined on day Xīnhài: His Highness said, ‘I do not plan on going’. Must not invite him.”; Yīngcáng 1864: 庚寅卜，王：余燎于其配 “Divined on day Gēngyǐn, His Majesty: I will make burnt offerings to his spouse.”
I understand 不 as scribal shorthand for 兹卜不用; see Hú Hòuxuān, “Shì zī yòng zī yù”; Schwartz, The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East, 87-88n43, 258n392; Schwartz, “How to Read an Oracle Bone from Huayuanzhuang East Pit H3”, 42n4, 48–49.
Schwartz, “How to Read an Oracle Bone Inscription from Huayuanzhuang East Pit H3”.
David N. Keightley, “Theology and the Writing of History”, 207.