Why was the oracle bone inscription discovered by scholars as late as the Guangxu period?

Why Oracle.

It was discovered by scholars as late as the Guangxu period? Let's take a look at this problem**, I hope these contents can help friends in need.

Oracle's discovery is linked to counterfeit drugs. Traditional Chinese medicine keels are generally fossils of paleontology, or porcelain clay mixed with sundries, and the original origin was not in Anyang, Henan.

Tao Hongjing of the Han Dynasty.

The stages are mainly "Liang, Yi, Bazhong, that is, Gansu, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Chongqing and other regions in China. Su Song of the Song Dynasty said that it was produced in "Hedong County", that is, Shanxi, and Li Shizhen of the Ming Dynasty.

It is also said that the "Jindi Canyon" is born, and there is no mention of Anyang, Henan. We know that Chinese herbal medicines pay great attention to the place of origin, and Chinese herbal medicines that are not the place of origin are even felt to have no practical effect. As everyone knows, in the Qing Dynasty, this kind of place was either relatively remote or inconvenient, perhaps through more than a thousand years, it became more and more difficult to find fossils with traditional techniques.

As everyone knows, in Anyang, I happened to find another item that could be counterfeited as the main keel, which was the oracle bone. This is also a hidden production line of counterfeit medicines, the Qing Dynasty's Chinese herbal medicine dealers as much as possible to choose oracle bones like the "main keel", they rejected the ** textured oracle bones, because they are very different from the main keel. Many local farmers in Anyang usually file the oracle bones and use shiny oracle bones to counterfeit the main keel.

Such counterfeit drugs are sold all over the country, and the people who buy them do not see the oracle at all.

Businessmen avoided talking about the origin of the oracle bones, because once the origin was revealed, the fraudulent personal behavior was also confirmed. Therefore, even Wang Yirong did not know the exact origin of the oracle bones, and it was not until Luo Zhenyu found Xiaotun Village according to his personal visit. Chinese characters have strong reliability, oracle bone inscriptions and golden inscriptions.

The font is very similar, from the Song Dynasty to the present, many literati and ink writers have a high level of gold and stone knowledge, and they can read Xu Shen's words.

and the runes on the bronze artifacts of the legendary world, if they can see the texture on the oracle bones, they may not be directly identified, but they should be quickly reflected back as texts. The oracle bone inscription was not discovered until the Guangxu period at the latest, just because experts, scholars, literati and ink writers did not have the opportunity to see the real oracle bones, and only said that fake medicine harmed people a lot!

Wang Yirong took medicine and discovered the oracle bone inscription, which was actually Liu He at the end of the Qing Dynasty.

Another version number was also recorded, Fan Shouxuan, Fan Weiqing and others, antique merchants in Weixian County, Shandong** oracle bones, and shipped to Beijing**. Wang Yirong and Wang Xiang, who were the country's chief priests, have always been fond of collecting cultural relics and are familiar with gold and stone writing, and they acquired these oracle bones from the first place in the hands of antique dealers, which led to the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions. Based on the way the old antique goods were circulated, it seemed that the oracles were more reliable than the pills, because they were taking fake medicines after all.

It is because people have entered the era of civilization at that time, the oracle bone inscription appeared more than 3,000 years ago, and the ancient characters of the Qing Dynasty are constantly developing, so the literati and ink writers at that time discovered the existence of the oracle bone inscription.

This is because ancient people did not like to dig other people's graves, and felt that it was a very unlucky behavior, so it led to a relatively long time of discovery.

Previous scholars had never seen a real oracle at all. Wang Yirong stumbled upon this kind of writing when he was taking medicine, which attracted people's attention.

Wrong. For the archaeology of Yinxu in the past 70 years, it is especially necessary to put forward three important research and discoveries of oracle bone inscriptions

The first time was on June 12, 1936, an oracle bone pit was excavated in the north palace area of Xiaotun Village, and 17,096 pieces of oracle bones with words were preserved, recording many activities in the period of King Wuding of Shang, it seems that this is the oracle bone archive of the Wuding royal family, and the excavation of this batch of oracle bone pieces has extremely valuable value for the study of the social politics, culture and life of the Wuding period. During the excavation, the pit also found a crouched, side-lying skeleton, mostly pressed against the oracle bone, which experts believe may be the keeper of the archives.

The second time, in 1973, 7,150 oracle bones were excavated in the south of Xiaotun Village, including 5,041 carved oracle bones. Pottery products were unearthed at the same time as these oracle bones, and this phenomenon of coexistence of oracle bones and pottery provides valuable information for the oracle bone inscription and Yinxu culture periodization.

The third time was in the autumn of 1991, an oracle bone pit of only 2 square meters was excavated in the east of Huayuanzhuang, but its stacking thickness was up to one meter, and 1,583 oracle bones were unearthed, of which 579 oracle bones were inscribed, and the records were rich, and the inquirers were all members of the royal family and high-ranking nobles in the Wuding period. It shows that during this period, divination activities are no longer limited to the supreme ruler king, and royal nobles can use divination to be good luck.

The oracle bone inscription is an ancient Chinese script, an early form of Chinese characters, sometimes considered one of the scripts of Chinese characters, and the oldest mature script of the Chinese dynastic period, first unearthed in Yinxu, Anyang City, Henan Province. It belongs to Old Chinese, not Ancient or primitive languages of other language families. [1-2]

The oracle bone inscription is also known as the "deed inscription", "oracle bone inscription", Yinxu script or "tortoiseshell beast bone inscription". The oracle bone inscriptions recorded and reflected the political and economic conditions of the Shang Dynasty, mainly referring to the inscriptions on tortoise shells or animal bones used by the royal family in the late Shang Dynasty (14th and 11th centuries BC) in China for divination. After the fall of the Yin Shang dynasty and the rise of the Zhou Dynasty, the oracle bone inscription was also used for a period of time, which is an important material for studying the social history of the Shang and Zhou dynasties.

The shape and structure of the oracle bone inscription has tended to be combined with independent bodies, and a large number of morphophonetic characters have appeared. It inherits the original carved symbols on the top and the bronze inscriptions on the bottom, which is the key form of the development of Chinese characters and is known as the "earliest Chinese character". Modern Chinese characters evolved from oracle bone inscriptions.

In a total of more than 100,000 pieces of oracle bones with characters, there are more than 4,000 different characters and graphics, of which about 2,800 characters have been recognized. [3]

The oracle bone has a symmetrical and stable pattern. Some people believe that Chinese calligraphy began with oracle bone inscriptions, because oracle bone inscriptions have prepared the three elements of calligraphy, namely, the use of brushes, knots, and chapters. [2]

The oracle bone inscription was found in Yinxu, Anyang City, Henan Province, China, but it was not unique to the Shang Dynasty and existed long before the Shang Dynasty. Archaeological research has found that the Yin Shang oracle bone inscription is very likely to originate from the Jiahu inscription symbol at the Peiligang cultural site in Henan Province 8,500 years ago.

Judging from the number of fonts and the way they are structured, oracle bone inscriptions have developed to a more rigorous and systematic script. The principle of "six books" of Chinese characters is reflected in the oracle bone inscriptions. However, the traces of the original pictorial text are still relatively obvious.

From the first discovery of the oracle bone inscription in 1899, according to the statistics of scholar Hu Houxuan, a total of more than 154,600 pieces of oracle bones were unearthed, of which more than 97,600 pieces were collected in the mainland, more than 30,200 pieces were collected in Taiwan Province, 89 pieces were collected in Hong Kong, and more than 127,900 pieces were collected in China, in addition, more than 26,700 pieces were collected in Japan, Canada, Britain, the United States and other countries. So far, there are about 4,500 characters engraved on these oracle bones, and about 2,000 words have been read out so far.

After the discovery of the oracle bones, goldsmiths, antique dealers, and foreigners began to search for them in large quantities. These non-scientific excavations often only take oracle bones, but ignore the burial of oracle bones, which greatly loses the value of the oracle bones. According to statistics, from 1889 to 1928, more than 100,000 oracle bones were unearthed by private excavations.

From the autumn of 1928 to the summer of 1937, due to the location of the oracle bones unearthed, when the Anti-Japanese War broke out, the archaeological group of the Institute of History and Philology of the ** Research Institute, under the auspices of the famous archaeologists Dong Zuobin, Li Ji, Liang Siyong and others, carried out 15 archaeological excavations in the area of Xiaotun Village for 10 years, not only found a total of more than 24,900 oracle bones, but also found the palace, temple ruins and royal tomb area in the late Shang Dynasty, and unearthed a large number of precious bronze, jade and pottery. From the material culture, it provides evidence that Yinxu was the royal capital of the Shang Dynasty. Yinxu has become a world-famous ancient cultural site, which once again shook the academic circles at home and abroad. Seek adoption.

During the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, Wang Yirong, an antique dealer and goldsmith, was the highest institution of learning at that time. Once he saw a Chinese medicine called dragon bone, and when he saw the words engraved on it, he felt very strange, so he looked at the medicine residue, but he didn't expect that there was a pattern that looked like words on it. So he bought all the keels and found that each keel had a similar pattern on it.

He drew these strange patterns, and after a long period of research he was convinced that it was a kind of writing, and it was relatively perfect, and it should be from the Yin Shang period. Later, people found the place where the keel was unearthed - Xiaotun Village, Anyang, Henan, where a large number of keels were unearthed. Because these keels are mainly the oracle bones of turtles and beasts, they are named "oracle bones" by people, and the discipline that studies them is called "oracle bones".

This statement is now doubtful, see Wang Xiang's entry for details. At that time, the pharmacy was sparse"Keel"There are rules, and those with words are not to be used, so it is impossible for the king to see it in the medicine. Fan Shouxuan first sold the keel to Wang Xiang, but Wang Xiang could not afford to buy it all, and the rest of Fan was brought to Beijing to sell to Wang Yirong.

In a total of more than 100,000 pieces of oracle bones with characters, there are more than 4,000 different characters and graphics, of which about 2,500 characters have been recognized.

Although the oracle bone inscription is a historical thing, but before the Qing Dynasty there were no real scholars who investigated history, until the end of the Qing Dynasty, in modern times, it was discovered by scholars studying abroad, and the people in the village who found the oracle bone inscription always took the bones dug from the ground as keel to sell, saying that it was a kind of medicinal material, which could cure diseases, and sold it to pharmacies.

It was not discovered before the Qing Dynasty It can be used as a medicinal herb and is not worth much Later, it was discovered by a literati during the Qing Dynasty and began to conduct research.

In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, there was still an 80% illiteracy rate in our country, let alone earlier. It's normal for ordinary people to see Oracle and not recognize its importance.

From the small seal of the Qin Dynasty to the official script of the Han Dynasty, the speed of evolution of writing was too fast, and the "book in the wall" of Confucius's old house at that time became an ancient text, and the phenomenon of loss of cultural information was very serious. For a long time, paleographic research was not taken seriously.

The great development of ancient characters in the Qing Dynasty is an important reason why oracle bone inscriptions can be discovered.

Because it was buried in Yin Ruins, it was not unearthed.

1, oracle bone inscription, is a kind of text evolved by the flame burning tortoise shell to produce cracks, it is generally recognized that the earliest Shang Dynasty emperor used to divinate the fate of the country when the flame burned the tortoise shell, resulting in cracks, through the crack ** national fortune. Therefore, the oracle bone inscription is very rare, which is equivalent to the jade seal of the country!

2, the general examination found that most of them were found when building a house (for example, the mercenary was found by a farmer digging a well) The oracle bone inscription slept in the place of 5-6 underground, and the foundation of the ancient building before the Qing Dynasty was generally not more than 4 meters, because the depth was not enough, so it was not found.

It's a coincidence.

Or, some armor pieces have been unearthed before, but they have not been "recognized" by the world and buried in the people.

Oracle's discovery is related to counterfeit medicines. Traditional Chinese medicine keels are generally fossils of paleontology, or kaolin mixed with impurities, and the earliest origin is not in Anyang, Henan. During the Tao Hongjing period of the Han Dynasty, it was mainly "Liang, Yi, and Bazhong, that is, Gansu, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Chongqing and other regions in China."

Su Song of the Song Dynasty said that it was produced in "Hedong Prefecture", that is, Shanxi, and Li Shizhen of the Ming Dynasty also said that it was born in "Jindi Valley", but there was no mention of Anyang, Henan. We know that traditional Chinese medicine is very particular about the place of origin, and herbs that are not of origin are even considered to have no effect. However, by the Qing Dynasty, these areas were either relatively remote or inaccessible, and perhaps after more than a thousand years, it became increasingly difficult to find fossils using traditional methods.

However, in Anyang, another thing that can be pretended to be a dragon bone was discovered, which is the oracle bone. This is a hidden production line of counterfeit medicines, and the Chinese herbal medicine dealers of the Qing Dynasty tried to select oracle bones that looked like "keels", and they refused to buy oracle bones with textures because they were too different from keels. Many local farmers in Anyang usually file the oracle bones and use the smooth oracle bones to pass off the dragon bones.

The counterfeit drug was sold all over the country, and the people who bought it did not see the oracle at all.

Merchants were secretive about the origin of oracle bones, because once the origin was exposed, the counterfeiting was confirmed. So even Wang Yirong didn't know the exact origin of the oracle bones, and it wasn't until Luo Zhenyu personally visited that he found Xiaotun Village. Chinese characters have a strong stability, oracle bone inscriptions and Jin inscriptions are very similar, since the Song Dynasty many literati have a high degree of gold and stone cultivation, they can read and speak the inscriptions on the inscriptions on the bronzes handed down from generation to generation, if they can see the lines on the oracle bone inscriptions, they may not be able to recognize them immediately, but they should quickly reflect that this is the text.

The oracle bone inscription was discovered late as Guangxu, just because scholars and literati did not have the opportunity to see the real oracle bones, and could only say that fake medicine harms people! The common theory is that Wang Yirong took medicine and found the oracle bone inscription, in fact, Liu He at the end of the Qing Dynasty also recorded another version, Fan Shouxuan, Fan Weiqing and others in Weixian County, Shandong Province antique merchants purchased the oracle bones and shipped them to Beijing for sale. Wang Yirong and Wang Xiang, who were the supervisors of the wine of the country at that time, had always liked to collect antiquities and were familiar with gold and stone writing, so they acquired these oracle bones from antique dealers, which led to the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions.

The discovery of oracle bones through the circulation of antiques seems to be more credible than taking medicine, because they are eating fake medicine after all.