Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1788 Practice, Expansion, and Enrichment

As for the distinction of seasons, from the oracle bone inscriptions, there were only two seasons in the Shang Dynasty, spring and autumn. The oracle inscriptions often mentioned "this spring" and "this autumn", which means this year, which is closely related to agricultural production, that is, spring planting and autumn harvest.

The method of using spring and autumn to represent a year was still used by the vassal states after the Western Zhou Dynasty. The title of the famous chronicle "Spring and Autumn Annals" comes from this.

But here in Spring and Autumn, the same event may be recorded differently in different historical books.

The Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties all had their own official calendars, which can be referred to as the "Three Calendars". The main difference between the three is the beginning of the year.

During the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, it became fashionable for each vassal state to use its own calendar.

Therefore, Rong Geng once gave an example in "General Study of Shang and Zhou Yi Qi": In the Western Zhou Dynasty, the year was all ruled by the king, so it was written as "the king's so-and-so year and so-and-so month". Since the Spring and Autumn Period, there have been people who used the year of each country, such as the "Egong Gui" which says "the first day of the second month of the first lunar ...

Regarding the king's year, "only the year of King So-and-so" definitely refers to the king's year of the Western Zhou Dynasty.

Otherwise, the following situations may occur:

The Spring and Autumn Annals, Yin Gong Sixth Year, records: "In winter, the people of Song took Changge." However, the record in Zuo Zhuan is: "In autumn, the people of Song took Changge."

For example, "Spring and Autumn Annals: The Fifth Year of Duke Xi" says "In spring, the Duke of Jin killed the crown prince Shensheng", but the same event appeared in "Zuo Zhuan" but it became "December".

The reason is that the State of Lu used the Zhou calendar, so the Spring and Autumn Annals also used the Zhou calendar to record years. Of course, it cannot be said that the method used by Zuo Zhuan was wrong, it just used the Xia calendar.

This is the phenomenon that in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, different countries used different "Three-Stage Calendars" and independently recorded years.

These are not important for the oracle bone inscription chronology system developed by Zhou Zhi and An Chunjia, but they are very important for post-Shang bronzes and the project that Director Song wants to do.

Let's go back to the oracle bone system. In the Shang Dynasty, the year was called "Si" in oracle bone script. The Shang king held different sacrifices at different times. After the sacrifices were completed, a year had passed, so "Si" was used to represent the year.

Therefore, the historical books say "Xia is called Sui, Shang is called Si, Zhou is called Nian, Tang and Yu are called Zai", which was also verified in the oracle bone inscriptions. The late oracle inscriptions often used the terms "only the king has two sacrifices" and "only the king has eight sacrifices". As long as "Si" appeared, it must be the oracle bones of the Yin calendar.

This also became the beginning of the usage of "year name" in later generations, which is equivalent to "the second year of a certain king" and "the eighth year of a certain king", and has a very important guiding significance for the compilation of history in later generations.

Although there were no distinct four seasons, the Yin people defined the year as starting from the winter solstice. Therefore, judging from their careful observation of celestial phenomena and calendar, they should have known the equinoxes, otherwise they would not have been able to arrange the intervening months.

Therefore, this system is still very complicated. It is not a simple matter of applying the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches to a certain year in the AD and calling it a day. It involves various deviations and corrections over nearly a thousand years of history.

The system developed by Zhou Zhi and An Chunjia is based on oracle bone inscriptions. If Director Song wants to achieve his goal, he will not talk about the Xia Dynasty for the time being, but the bronze inscriptions of the Zhou Dynasty must be included in this system.

As mentioned before, Yi is the general name for bronze ritual vessels, so the inscriptions on bronze vessels are also called "Yi inscriptions".

Judging from the inscriptions on the Yi of the Shang Dynasty, the calendar of the Shang Dynasty used a method that combined the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, the months, and the year of the king's sacrifice. It is difficult to judge whether this calendar method belongs to the Yellow Emperor's calendar, the Zhuanxu calendar, or the Yin calendar. We classify it as the Yin calendar based on the general pattern of the calendar and the dynasty. The famous "Shu Si Zi Ding" has a time-keeping Yi inscription: "Jia Zi...Only the tenth month and the second...Only the king's 20th sacrifice." The "Only the king's 20th sacrifice" here refers to the twentieth year of the great ancestor sacrifice after a certain Shang king ascended the throne.

Let’s look at the time-keeping inscription in “Ersi Qiyou”: “Bingchen…the first month…the king offered sacrifices twice.” The “king offered sacrifices twice” here refers to the year of the second great ancestor sacrifice after a certain Shang king ascended the throne.

The importance of these two inscriptions lies in their order, from which we can see that, generally speaking, the Shang Dynasty used the day first, the month second, and the year last.

For this reason, Guo Moruo's book "The Collection of Yin Qi" specifically mentioned a passage of oracle inscriptions: Guichou divination. Zhen: This year is auspicious. It is only the eighth month, and only the king is offering sacrifices.

Here, the three characters "岁", "年" and "祭" appear together, which is typical. But obviously, only "祭" here means historical chronology.

Therefore, generally speaking, as long as the record of "only the king is worshipped" appears in the Yi inscriptions, it can be confirmed that it comes from the Shang Dynasty.

This method of dating gradually evolved into the Zhou Dynasty's method of dating by using the king's year, month, moon phase, and the heavenly stems and earthly branches.

Of course, the order of months and years is occasionally reversed, and in some cases, both months and years are omitted.

In addition, although the Yin people worshipped ghosts and gods, large-scale ancestor worship activities were carried out on an annual basis. Generally, their temple names would be combined with the anniversary of their death.

For example, the Jiazi day of the twelfth month in a certain Yi inscription was used to worship the ancestor Jia. This is not accidental.

On the Jiazi day, we worship the ancestor Jia, so the name of the ancestor "Jia" is obviously directly related to the sacrificial activities on the "Jia" day.

Therefore, the chronology in the oracle bone inscriptions can be referenced with the chronological list of activities of the Shang royal family, which undoubtedly provides a very favorable lateral evidence for the chronology of divination.

In general, the time-recording inscriptions on stone vessels from the Shang Dynasty are relatively easy to understand. The day stem, month, and royal year are very clear. At least the complex moon phase issue in the time-recording inscriptions on stone vessels from the Western Zhou Dynasty was not the mainstream or core issue in the Yin and Shang Dynasty.

Therefore, the chronological system developed by Zhou Zhi and An Chunjia still lacks the moon phase diagram. In order for the system to meet the requirements of the project proposed by Director Song, it is necessary to continue to expand the types of labels.

However, the major methodology has been established and has been effectively practiced. All that remains is to expand and enrich it. The most difficult stage has actually been overcome.

Especially since oracle bone divinations and bronze Yi inscriptions belong to the same large seal script system, that is why Director Song was particularly happy and exclaimed, "If the monk can touch it, so can I."

That night, An Chunjia came to the Science and Technology Commission and plunged into the computer room.

It should be said that the strength of the Science and Technology Commission is still very strong. In just half a day, Zhou Zhi has built a basic server cluster here, installed basic software, and is waiting for An Chunjia to come and refine it.

It has a TYPE-C interface, can be hot-swapped, and is a mobile storage device with a maximum capacity of 64G, consisting of an internal 256M SDRAM memory chip. It has now become the best partner for top information technology engineers.