Riding the wind of rebirth

However, Zhou Zhi only dared to criticize, because as long as he dared to ask this, the two old men would definitely say: "Why not?"

Sure enough, Mr. Qiu opened Zhou Zhi's lecture notes and brought up the old matter again: "Your method of summarizing the roots of oracle bone characters is indeed a good idea. It also shows that the Liushu calligraphy method actually originated as early as the oracle bone period. You can definitely study it again. , write a paper, and can bronze inscriptions and bird seal scripts also be used..."

Zhou Zhi quickly changed the subject: "I have some thoughts of my own on whether the oracle's destiny is a question or an affirmative."

"Oh?" Mr. Qiu's interest was indeed grasped by Zhou Zhi: "Tell me about it."

"I think it's actually a bit of both."

"In other words, Zhenren is not responsible for his own conclusions?" Qiu Xigui asked.

"This needs to be further studied." Zhou Zhi said: "However, judging from the inscriptions, some literary structures are indeed very obvious."

"I prefer that oracle bones have their own fixed filing format, which can be roughly divided into four parts: narrative, destiny, fortune telling, and verification."

"For example, this sentence: Jiayou divination, struggle, chastity: ten days of death and disaster. Wang Zhan said: There is evil! In the fifth day, there will be trouble coming from the west."

"The sentence 'Jiayoubu, Zheng, Zhen' is a descriptor, indicating that the time of divination is Jiayou day, the event is divination, the fortune teller is an official named 'Zheng', and his position is 'Zhenren', that is, he is responsible for passing the divination A person who provides professional explanations on the traces of burned tortoise-shell animal bones made by diviners.”

"'Ten days of death and disaster' is a fortune-telling word, which is the result obtained by the Zhen people after divination on the matters ordered by the king. Here it means that there will be no disasters in the next ten days."

"The sentence 'Divination: There is evil spirit' is a word of divination, and divination is the final conclusion reached by the king. It can be seen here that the King of Shang has the highest interpretation power in divination activities, and can overturn the conclusion of Zhenren Zhen after divination. For example, this divination contends that there will be no disaster, but the king insists that there will be disaster."

"The last sentence is a testimonial, which records the final result of the divination. It is recorded here that five days later, news of the disaster came from the west. It shows that the king is still more powerful than the Zhen people."

"Yes, so the dictation here, that is, when Zhenren gives a conclusion, it is an affirmative sentence pattern." Mr. Qiu said: "This is also my conclusion."

"But what about this set of divination words?" Zhou Zhi asked: "Gengzi divination, Zheng Zhen: The next Xin Chou, it will start? Guang Zhen: The next Xin Chou, it will not start? The king said: It will rain tonight, and the next Xin Chou will start. It rains one night, and it rains the next day."

"The difference between this set of words and the previous set is very big. When translated, there is a structure of 'Yixin Chouqi' and 'Yixin Chou Bu Qiqi' appearing side by side. Shouldn't it be translated as 'Zhenren' They asked: Will the sun rise tomorrow on Xinchou Day? Will the sun not rise? This is a question like this?"

"And in order to answer this question, King Shang said: It will rain this evening and the sun will shine tomorrow."

"The test also confirmed the accuracy of King Shang's divination: it rained that night, and the sun came out the next day."

"Judging from the sentence structure of the oracle, it is difficult to say that this dictation is not a question."

"There are many more sentences like this, such as 'A good woman will give birth to a good child? Not a good one?', or 'Eastern soil will receive a good year? A bad year?', or 'Ten days will bring misfortune? Ten days will bring misfortune?'"

"If these predicates are conclusions, some of them are unreasonable. The proposition given by the king is what gender the child born by a good woman will be. If this is an affirmative sentence, then the result given by Zhenren is "The child born by a good woman may be. Boy, maybe girl. '" "The king of Shang asked: 'Will there be a good harvest in the east? Zhenren came to the conclusion: "There may be a good harvest, or there may be a bad harvest." King Shang asked: "Will there be any harm in the next ten days?" 'The conclusion is: 'There may be disaster, or there may not be disaster. ', if you do this, I doubt Zhenren will be beheaded. Zhou Zhi said.

Qiu Xigui said: "However, through the comprehensive study of numerology, we can not only find that 'a woman is lucky to give birth, but it is not.' With such a structure, we can also find that 'the east soil receives the year, the east soil receives the year', or 'the ten days of death are misfortunes' , a sentence pattern like "it will be destroyed in ten days."

"Now I am more inclined to call the two sentences with completely opposite contents as 'Du Zhen', and call the two sentences with the same content as 'Pai Zhen'."

"If it is a question about chastity, it cannot explain the phenomenon of chastity exclusion."

Huh? Zhou Zhi found that he was shallow again. After saying this, it seemed that Mr. Qiu's idea was more reasonable.

"Let's look at this type of divination together." Qiu Xigui took down the thick book from the bookshelf and turned to a labeled place: "Look here, 'Wang Divination, Weiyi Divination', and here, 'It uses three divination', and there is also this kind of 'Wuzi divination, which uses six divination'."

"It can be seen from these divination that for a major event, merchants often do not divination once. Three divination can be almost counted as a system, and in many cases, it can even be six divination."

"Each time of divination, Zhenren came to different conclusions. When Zhenren could not make a decision, the problem was handed over to the king, who made a 'divination'."

"Therefore, it makes sense to record the different results of Zhen people's divination in the fortune-telling, or to emphasize the same results of divination, and to use Du Zhen and Zhen for the King of Shang to make a choice."

"I also agree with your statement that the oracle bone inscriptions should be divided into four paragraphs: narrative, destiny, fortune telling, and verification. However, the four paragraphs should all be declarative sentences. The name of the person in the narrative may just be the manager of Zhenren. He is responsible for gathering different people. The Zhen people’s interpretation of the divination marks will be reported to the King of Shang, who will make a decision.”

"There may be exceptions at every stage of divination. For example, sometimes a section is missing, or the divination is sometimes performed by a person trusted by the King of Shang, or sometimes, the entire divination of narration, destiny, divination, and verification is The process is all completed by King Shang.”

"But the oracles are a record of the results, so they should be declarative sentences, rather than 'fate, ask for the truth' as ​​traditionally believed."

"Today's research in the academic world has divided destiny words into shuwen, zhengwen, jiwen, divination code, verification code, fengdian, classics and history code. Except for zhenwen, the rest are definitely declarative sentences. The only dispute is, It’s about whether Zhenwen is a declarative sentence or not.”

"So that's it." Zhou Zhi scratched his forehead, feeling that he was working behind closed doors again.

Qiu Xigui said: "Of course it is a good thing to have your own ideas. When you have an idea, you should find evidence to prove it. No matter whether the final answer is yes or no, it is a benefit to learning."

"Your opinion cannot be said to be wrong. It is a reflection and inference based on the knowledge you have already mastered. It is very valuable." Qiu Xigui said with a smile: "But you have not studied this knowledge deeply enough, and the knowledge you have mastered is not comprehensive enough. , without fully grasping the information elements, the conclusion drawn is of course relatively one-sided, let us call it 'one-sided correct'."

"One-sided correctness is not the truth, so our top priority now is to establish Oracle's information system as soon as possible, so that when you encounter similar confusion in the future, you can quickly search within the system to find out all the details to verify yourself idea.”

"Are you interested in working in Anyang for a period of time? There is the largest Oracle picture library there. You can use your advantages to digitize it and make it available to Oracle researchers across the country. I can be your recommender!"

"Uh, this..." Zhou Zhi waved his hands repeatedly: "Mr. Qiu, it's definitely not possible now."