Help With Oracle Bone

[Georgei]

I have been trying to decipher this oracle bone. This particular bone has been written about online a little. They all say the pictogram scripts revolve around a supernova event 1300 BC. I only have a couple of books that have been using. One called Mao King Ting. It is about the pictograms on a bronze vessel. The second book, much more helpful is called, The origins of Chinese Characters. A third book on the way is called, These Bones Shall Rise Again, but will not be here until Aug 27.

So far I can see nothing on this oracle bone specifically about a supernova. It seems people are using the group of three circles pictogram as meaning supernova. I don't think that is correct..

Any way, the pic below shows what I have come up with so far. The pictograms outlined in green are the ones I could sure use some help with. Maybe they will be in the book that is in the mail.

The only lines that are making some sense are the last two rows.. One does talk about "great constellation or stars above men standing on land, mountain" . At least that is what I am getting.

The last row seems in part to be , "the seventh day, fourth lunar month/moon". I do not know the second pictogram from the top, or the last one that I can only guess is either a season, or the king of the period this bone was inscribed.

In a nutshell, any help in completing the entire event/story line would be greatly appreciated. I think the first two rows are not making much sense and may not help in the end, but the last two rows would give me the most relevant storyline .

Going to have this oracle bone painted, and would like to have a calligrapher add some seal script to the painting describing the story line as best as possible.

 

 

[OneEye]

A few problems here. For one, these aren't pictograms. They're Chinese characters, and they're a fully fledged writing system by the time they were using these tortoise plastrons for divination. You can't try to interpret them like pictograms (men standing on land, "I think mountain fits better," etc.). If 火 is what's written (and it is), it doesn't make sense to call it 山. The two forms are quite distinct (edit: actually, that's not always the case; they often do look almost identical). Also, in this context, "mountain" wouldn't really make sense. "Men standing on land" is 並, meaning "together with," or perhaps in this context "next to/near."

 

Another issue is that you can't really read this stuff without a lot of specialized knowledge. The best you can do is read what actual specialists say about it. I can read most of the characters, but I'm not an oracle bone script specialist by any means. These inscriptions have their own grammar, they're highly formalized because they're used for divination, and a correct interpretation requires a massive amount of knowledge about Shang culture, astronomy and how the Shang talked about it, etc. The best I can do is read what actual specialists say, keeping in mind what each scholar's particular strengths and weaknesses are, and try to arrive at an interpretation that seems reasonable.

 

And related to that issue is the fact that this particular inscription is quite controversial. There seem to be a lot of different interpretations out there, and I can't really hope to add anything meaningful to the discussion because this isn't my specialty.

 

Another issue is that two people may read it the same way but transcribe it differently. There are a lot of different ways to transcribe this stuff. Do you stay as close as possible to the form of the original? Do you transcribe it using modern characters? The character that looks like three circles is 晶, but 晶 is the original form of 星, so which should I transcribe it with? Some scholars prefer one, some prefer the other, and some will write 晶（星）, and any of those three ways would be fine, but to a layman they may seem completely different.

 

And just keep in mind that things aren't nearly as cut and dry when reading these texts as we're used to them being in modern writing. Part of that is due to the limited evidence we have available, part of it is due to differences in thinking, and part is due to the fact that many texts (including this one) are fragments.

 

With all those things in mind, here's what I think is the most likely transcription, using modern characters.

 

七日己已夕（？）...有新大星並火，咎其有來艱...不吉

 

Not sure what the character I transcribed with a question mark is. One interpretation I saw is that it means 曀, or cloudy skies. That makes sense in context, but I'm not sure.

 

On the seventh day, 己已, in the evening (it was cloudy), there was a large new star near Antares (or Mars?). Something about calamity and bringing hardship (not really sure how to read this phrase)....Inauspicious.

 

Don't quote me on that though! That's just the best I'm able to do with my limited knowledge and time. Much better would be to read the published research (most of which will be in Chinese, of course) on this particular inscription.

[Georgei]

Hi OneEye !

 

From what I have found and tried to wrap my head around based on books and online articles, I agree 100% that "best I can do is read what actual specialists say, keeping in mind what each scholar's particular strengths and weaknesses are, and try to arrive at an interpretation that seems reasonable".

 

I have one more book that will be here on the 27th.  Want to take some time with it, go back over what I have gathered so far, and come back to chat a bit with you.  In a nutshell, I want to come up with as best I can the story line that the inscriber was trying to portray, and then plan on having a unique piece of Chinese artwork created around this.  

 

Like you mentioned, this particular oracle bone is indeed controversial. Although there are those who see Antares, or relate to a supernova event, I just am not seeing that.. 

 

For now, I just want to say thank you very much for taking the time to reply.. Very much appreciated..  Hope you don't mind picking up further discussion about this particular oracle bone in a couple weeks.. 

 

Thanks again OneEye !