The Legend of Shushan Xuanjian

Chapter 302 Deciphering the Remnant Monument
The yin and yang in the evening urges short scenes, the end of the world is frosty and snowy for a cold night.

The sound of drums and horns was tragic and vigorous, and the shadow of the Three Gorges Galaxy was shaken.

Ye Cry thousands of families heard the war, and Yi Ge started fishing in several places.

The crouching dragon and the leaping horse end up in the loess, and the human affairs, news and books are long and lonely

——Du Fu in Pavilion Night

……

Just when Bai Fu was fascinated by these stone sculptures, a broken stone tablet in the weeds jumped into his eyes.

The stele is divided into upper and lower sections, with two kinds of strange symbols engraved on them. To outsiders, these symbols are like some kind of ancient totem.

There are fourteen lines of symbols on the top of the stele. These symbols are like small nails, and they seem to be some kind of cuneiform script.Both the beginning and the end of this symbol are missing, making it difficult to decipher.

There are 32 lines of symbols on the lower part of the stele, and its shape is neither seal nor seal. It is an ancient character that has never been seen in the world.The lines of the text are mostly straight lines, straight down and straight up, slightly thicker in the middle, and slightly thinner at both ends, making it look thin and straight.

The characters are mainly rectangular, combined with square and circle, opening and closing, and pictographic pictures, simple and vivid, and lifelike.

To others, these two symbols are like heavenly scriptures, esoteric and difficult to understand, but when Bai sees them again, he is overjoyed.Because the symbols on the lower part of the stele are exactly the symbols on the tortoise shell and animal bones unearthed in Xiaotun, Xiangzhou - the early Yin and Shang writings.

Xu Taifu once asked Bai Fu to firmly memorize the Chinese characters corresponding to each Yin Shang language.

Although Bai Fu did not recognize the symbol on the top of the stele, he was no stranger to it.These cuneiform characters are exactly the golden ancient seal characters that Bai Fu had seen on Kan Ding and Xun Ding—the characters belonging to the gods.

Judging from the arrangement of the inscriptions on the stele, although there are changes in the density between the characters, the upper and lower lines of characters run through, the sizes are dependent, the left and right correspond, and they are patchwork.The structure of the handwriting, echoed in circles, and well-organized, should be the chapters that record the content.

Bai Fu pondered over and over again, and felt that the two words on the stele should say the same thing.Through the anchor positions corresponding to the oracle bone script and Chinese characters, I might be able to infer the golden ancient seal!
Thinking of this, Bai Fu burst into ecstasy, he didn't care to go back to the Bashu Guild Hall to rest and fight at night with the lights on.

For the next few days, Bai Fu was immersed in the fun of deciphering cuneiform characters.

……

At first, Bai Fu felt that cuneiform characters were completely ideographic, just like oracle bone characters.Following this line of thought, Bai Fu studied for several months, and after deciphering part of the text, he was still unable to break through.

The deciphering was deadlocked, Bai Fu lived and ate in the Prince Yin's mansion, with a scruffy beard, long hair knotted, and ragged clothes, like a disciple of the beggar gang.Bai Fu behaved like a madman all day long, talking and babbling to himself around the stone tablet.

None of the craftsmen in Prince Qing's Mansion dared to get close, for fear of being accidentally injured by Bai Fu, who is a master of martial arts.

On this day, the Persian princess Boni Attil asked Bai Fu to go to the restaurant for dinner, and Bai Fu went back to the Bashu Hall to wash and change clothes.

The Persian princess Boni Atti dressed up meticulously, changing from the old Hu clothes to the most fashionable Tang Dynasty ladies' clothes.On the golden falling horse bun, there is a floating flower hairpin with moon scroll and lion pattern inserted.The hibiscus flower butterfly slanted skirt and the bright blue embroidered butterfly cloud silk long skirt make the tall figure more convex.

The only thing that remains the same is that she still wears a veil, and her blue eyes are sparkling, captivating.

Wherever the Princess of Persia went, the brilliance was overwhelming, and the guests of the restaurant stepped out of the way one after another, watching her calmly board the box on the second floor in ecstasy.

Bai Fu followed the Persian princess and went upstairs to the banquet in a daze.

Boni Atti smiled like a flower, and introduced the customs and customs of her hometown Persia in non-standard Chinese.When there are Persian place names and personal names that are difficult to translate, Boniati often uses transliteration instead.

Bai Fu suddenly realized!

At first, Bai Fu felt that cuneiform characters were completely ideographic, just like oracle bone characters.However, Bai Fu discovered that if cuneiform characters, like Chinese characters, have one symbol and one meaning, the two paragraphs of the same text on the stone tablet, the cuneiform characters would be too long compared to the oracle bone characters.Therefore some cuneiform must have been syllabic.

Thinking of this, Bai Fu was extremely excited. He left the Persian princess Boni Atti behind, and couldn't wait to go downstairs, so he pushed open the window lattice, flew down from the second floor, and went straight to the Zangshu Pavilion of Hongwenguan.

The Persian princess Bonny Atti was stunned on the spot. Before she could react, Bai Fu had already disappeared at the end of the long street.

Boni Atti was so embarrassed, Bai Fu ignored the meticulous dressing for several hours, and even "run away" in the middle of the banquet.Bonnie Atti pouted and stamped her feet angrily, vowing to make Bai look good again.

……

After several days and nights of restless textual research and review of literature and classics, Bai Fu used the names and posthumous titles of several Yin kings confirmed in the oracle bone inscriptions to confirm the corresponding anchor positions of the cuneiform and oracle bone inscriptions.

Then Bai Fu found the meaning of the syllable symbols in the twelve cuneiform characters, and drew a correspondence table between the cuneiform syllables and the pronunciation letters of the oracle bone characters.

After completing the most difficult step, Bai Fu gradually deciphered the content on the remnant stele.

It turned out that this stele was a magic weapon used by King Pangeng of Yin to hold a ceremony to sacrifice to heaven in the new capital during the period of "Pan Geng moved to Yin".The characters carved in seal on the stele are sacrificial rites to the gods.

The fourteen-line cuneiform script on the top of the stele, also known as "Shenshu style", is a script dedicated to the gods.

The 32 lines of oracle bone inscriptions on the lower section of the stele, also known as "secular style", are the common characters of Yin and Shang common people.

Therefore, there is a phenomenon of two inscriptions on one stele.

Undoubtedly, this remnant stele is the golden key that opens the door to the history of the Yin and Shang Dynasties.

This fragmentary inscription records an unimaginable and jaw-dropping story.

"During the Yao and Shun period, floods were rampant, and the Youchong clan of Songshan Mountain on the south bank of the Dahe River and the Gonggong clan of Taihang Mountain on the north bank of the Dahe River were both tribes who were good at water control.

Gun was the leader of the Chong clan.In order to resist the flood, many tribes formed an alliance and elected Gun as the leader to control the flood.However, Gun's water control lasted nine years and ultimately failed.After the failure of flood control, Gun was killed in Yushan on the coast of the Yellow Sea.

Yu was Gun's son. After Gun's death, Yu was ordered to join forces with the Gonggong clan and other tribes to continue flood control in Yi, Luo, He, and Ji areas.Yu gave up Gun's strategy of "blocking" water control, and instead focused on dredging.According to the height of the terrain, divert the accumulated water from the river, so that the fertile plain can reduce water damage.

After Dayu controlled the flood, the residents on the mountain moved to the wilderness to reclaim the fertile soil.Since then, those swampy lands with lush vegetation and breeding animals have become places where people are willing to settle.

Thanks to Dayu's merits in water control, the power of the tribe increased, and Dayu was able to unify the kingship.

After Dayu established the Xia Dynasty, he divided the world into Kyushu, ordered Kyushu prefects to donate bronze, and cast Jiuding to symbolize Kyushu. The famous mountains and rivers, ghosts, spirits, and strange things in Kyushu were engraved on the body of Kyushu, and one tripod symbolized one state. And gather the nine tripods in the capital of the Xia Dynasty, and display them outside the palace gate to avoid evil and auspiciousness, and pray for the protection of the Xia Dynasty from heaven. "

The above is the legend of Xia Yu Jiuding recorded in the history books.

However, the real history is: Dayu concealed the real secret of Xia Yu Jiuding...

　注释

　　1. The story of Bai Fu’s deciphering of the inscriptions was changed from the story of Champollion deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs through the Rosetta Stone, and Rawlinson deciphering Mesopotamian cuneiform characters through the Beheston inscriptions.

　　2. In 1822, the talented French linguist Champollion deciphered the meaning of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on the stele through the ancient Greek text on the stele, and the veil of the 5000-year civilization in the Nile River Basin was lifted.

　　3. The British Rawlinson saw a shocking scene on the cliffs near the village of Beheston on the outskirts of Hamadan—a thousand-year-old giant carving with a height of [-] meters.

　　Rawlinson hired a young Kurdish boy to carve out many strange symbols on the upper part of the huge carving.This is the famous Bechstown inscription.

　　It took him 16 years to decipher Persian cuneiform, and he published his deciphering results in 1849.

　　Subsequently, many scientists worked together to crack them one by one in the following order:

　　Old Persian cuneiform - New Elamite cuneiform - Babylonian cuneiform - Sumerian cuneiform.

　　From the end of the 19th century to the 20s, it took about half a century before the cuneiform writing in Mesopotamia was basically understood.Since then, we have been able to understand nearly 40 years of civilization on earth.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)