Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1783: Li Gui and Oracle Bone Integration Project

Researcher Wu pointed to the Li Gui and said, "This Li Gui itself is not big, nor heavy. It is 28 centimeters tall, 22 centimeters in diameter, and weighs 7.95 kilograms. That's nearly pounds."

"It has a wide mouth, an animal head with two drooping ears, a drooping belly, and a square base cast under the ring foot. The body and the square base are decorated with taotie patterns, and the four corners of the square base are decorated with cicada patterns. This type of bronze square base was first seen in the early Western Zhou Dynasty and is a new type of vessel." Researcher Wu said: "This is why the gui mentioned by Xu Shen and Zheng Xuan is different. Originally, there were two ritual vessels, gui and fu. Because they were both used to hold grain, they were often placed together. In the early Zhou Dynasty, they were simply cast into one."

"The Li Gui was unearthed in Lingkou Town, Lintong County, Shaanxi Province in 1976. It became a national treasure of our country because of the -character inscription on it, which records the major historical event of King Wu's conquest of King Zhou in the early morning of the Jiazi day. Therefore, it is also called 'King Wu's Conquest of Shang Gui', 'Zhou Dynasty Tianmie Gui', and 'Tan Gong Gui'."

Although bronze inscriptions and oracle bone inscriptions appeared in different periods of time, with oracle bone inscriptions appearing in the Shang Dynasty and bronze inscriptions in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and their carriers are also different, they both come from the same system of character formation - the Large Seal Script.

However, the Shang people and the Zhou people had different writing standards, and there were still huge differences between the two in many characters. Even Zhou Zhi, who was proficient in oracle bone inscriptions, could not recognize all the bronze inscriptions on this artifact.

Fortunately, there was a piece of paper next to the artifact. In addition to the rubbing inscription, there was also a corresponding text written in regular script next to it: "King Wu conquered Shang. On the first day of the first month, the year of Ding, he conquered Shang. On the second day of the first month, the king was in Lanshi and gave You (You) Shi (Shi) Li gold to use as a precious bronze vessel for Tan Gong."

"Who is this Tan Gong?" Goro Sakamoto's main research area is porcelain, and he does not know much about bronze ware and the history of the Shang and Zhou dynasties.

"Gong Danfu, surnamed Ji, given name Dan, also known as King Tai of Zhou." Xintian used to mainly collect bronze artifacts, so he knew more about these: "Grandfather of King Wen of Zhou, founder of the Zhou Dynasty."

"Yes, he is the twelfth-generation grandson of Hou Ji. History believes that he is the key figure who inherited the great achievements of Hou Ji and Gong Liu and initiated the prosperous era of King Wen and King Wu. He is a far-sighted politician, reformer, military strategist, and a famous wise king in history."

"When the people were first born, they were from the earth of Juqi. Gugong Tanfu, Tao Fu Tao, had no family. Gugong Tanfu came to the court on horseback. He led the Western Water Margin and arrived at Qixia. Then, along with Jiang Nu, they came to Xuyu. Zhouyuan was lush and green, and the violets were as delicious as candy."

"This poem "Mian" in the "Book of Songs·Da Ya·Wen Wang Zhi Shi" tells the epic story of how Duke Tan led the Zhou people to migrate from the Ju and Qi rivers to Qixia, where they multiplied and prospered."

"Elbow has a rich heritage." Researcher Wu praised: "If you come to study bronze inscriptions, you will definitely get twice the result with half the effort. It should be a pleasant surprise to be able to constantly find relevant historical facts in the inscriptions, right?"

"This artifact is important because it mentions two dates, 'Jia Zi' and 'Xin Wei'."

"King Wu conquered Shang on the morning of the Jiazi day, the year of Ding, and conquered Shang. On the Xinwei day, the king was in Lanshi and gave gold to Youshi Li, who was used as a precious vessel for Tan Gong." Zhou Zhi read the inscription: "The meaning is not difficult to understand. King Wu conquered Shang on the morning of the Jiazi day. Conquering Shang means it was close to dusk, and Su means when the moon came out. You Shang means the capital of Shang was conquered. On the Xinwei day, which is eight days later, the king was in Lanshi. King Wu assembled the troops in Lan and gave the deputy commander named Li auspicious gold to make a ritual vessel for worshiping the ancestor Tan Gong."

"But how do we explain the word 'Sui Ding' here?" "This is the most controversial part." Researcher Wu said: "According to the research done by Huang Huaixin, Tang Lan, Yu Xingwu, Zhang Zhenglang, Xu Zhongshu and other scholars, Mr. Zhang Zhenglang advocates that 'Sui Ding' has nothing to do with the oracle inscription 'Sui Bu'. 'Sui' refers to the year star, that is, Jupiter. 'Ding' is interpreted as 'Dang', which means 'the year star is in the sky';"

"Mr. Xu Zhongshu believes that Ding should be read as Ze. Based on Guo Zhongshu's explanation in Peizhi that 'ancient text uses Zhen as Ding, and 籒文 uses Ding as Ze', Mr. Xu Zhongshu and Mr. Zhang Zhenglang both believe that 'Sui' is the Jupiter star, and Sui Ze means that the Jupiter star is directly above the army."

"Mr. Tang Lan believes that the two characters should be '越鼎', which means to seize the tripod. And the person who seized the tripod is most likely You Shili who received the huge reward."

"Mr. Chui Fengnian also believes that these two characters are not 'Sui Ding'. He believes that these two characters should be 'Shu Huang', which means that the army stationed here to conquer Shang."

"Mr. Qi Guiyan believed that 'Sui Ding' means the Jupiter star is in the sky, which indicates a good omen. 'Sui' means Jupiter star, and 'Ding' means when."

"Yu Xingwu, Zhao Cheng, Huang Shengzhang, Wang Yuxin and other scholars believed that the two words should be 'Sui Zhen', which means to ask questions during the annual sacrifice."

"Mr. Zhao Cheng also thinks it is the word 'Sui Zhen', but the word 'Sui' here does not mean the annual sacrifice, but means 'year'. The meaning of this sentence is 'Zhen Wen's major events of this year', which seems to make sense."

"So many interpretations..." Zhou Zhi felt that Chinese characters were very charming, but they also had problems, that is, they were too concise and the meanings of the characters were too rich, which could easily lead to ambiguity, especially in ancient Chinese. It would be fine if the characters were concise and to the point, but if they were "concise and to the point", there would be a hundred different Hamlets in the eyes of a hundred people: "But no matter what, the record here that the Battle of Muye took place on the Jiazi day, and the record of defeating Shang in one day is consistent with the "Book of Documents·Mu Ye" in "Shang Shu·Mu Ye", which says 'At dawn on the Jiazi day, the king arrived at the outskirts of Shang at Muye', and the "Huainanzi·Binglue Xun" in which 'the king defeated Zhou in one day'..."

"If there really is such an astronomical phenomenon as Jupiter in the sky..." Zhou Zhi suddenly thought of a major event that had happened in the Chinese literary and historical circles: "Has the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasty dating project not started yet?"

"What? There is such a project?" asked Researcher Wu.

"I think we can give it a try." Zhou Zhi's heart was pounding. "We have jointly launched an oracle bone splicing project with the University of Shu and Yinxu. We scan the oracle bone fragments that have been discovered, and then use a computer program to detect the shape of the edges of the oracle bones, find out the oracle bones that can be pieced together, and piece them together. This will allow some oracle bones with only sporadic words to be pieced together into a whole piece with complete oracle inscriptions. So far, this project is still in progress and has achieved some results. We have published three materials: "Oracle Bone Splicing Collection", "Oracle Bone Splicing Sequel", and "Oracle Bone Splicing Collection Three"."

"At the same time, we also sorted out the duplicates of rubbings, photos and other materials collected in various places in the past, and finally stored all these materials in the database. Now we are trying to compile a "Chronological Outline of Oracle Bone Inscriptions" based on the information recorded on the oracle inscriptions."

"Many methods are used here, such as the characteristics of the era of writing standards, the era of word formation principles, the process of variant characters from original characters to modified characters, etc., all of which are clues to this chronology."

"The most important of these, of course, are the records of dates in the oracles and oracle inscriptions, as well as some important astronomical phenomena."