The term k'an-yü, which is seen in various texts from the Huai-nan-tzu (completed by 139 B.C.) onwards, has been subject to various attempts at explanation, and it is possible that its original meaning may have become forgotten at a comparatively early stage. It will be noted below that fromnthe third or fourth century commentators were explaining k'an-yü as referring to heaven and earth, but apparently without a clear comprehension of the term. In much more recent times, k'an-yü-chia has been used as a synonym for feng-shui-chia, meaning, specifically, experts in geomancy whose aim lay in ensuring that a site on earth would be auspicious, either for occupation or for burial.

Both the paper and the author's presentation.

The paper deals with the oracle-bone inscriptions referring to Fu Hao (or Zi), indirectly addressing the question whether this Fu Hao is the same person as the one mentioned in the bronze inscriptions from M5 at Anyang. The combined researches of Shima Kunio and Yen I-p'ing have already established that all but one of the 262 Fu Zi oracle inscriptions so far known are from Tung Tso-pin's Period I. The only doubtful instance remaining is Jiabian 668, dated by Shima to Tung's Period IV. The main reason for this dating was the shape of the graph used for the character wu. On Jiabian 668, this graph is rendered as , whereas according to the received opinion it should, in Period I, have been 1, or 8. Chang Ping-Ch'üan, however, had also observed the graph in Period I oracle bones. Therefore he agreed with Hu Houxuan's opinion that Jiabian 668 ought to date from Period I. Among Tung Tso-pin's criteria for dating oracle bones, calligraphic style was decidedly the weakest, and it should not be made the basis for far-reaching arguments.

There is a logical flaw in dating Jiabian 668 to Period IV and at the same time assuming that Fu Hao was Wu Ding's consort. Neiteher Wu Yi nor Wenwu Ding could have referred to her as fu, but would have had to address her as mu, or bi, or gaobi. Yen-I-p'ing's hypothesis that Jiabian 668 was inscribed when Fu Hao had already long been dead did not take this into account.

(N.B. A version of this paper has now been published in Kaogu 1983.8:716-725.)

Of the bronze vessels discovered in 1976 when the Fu Hao tomb at Anyang was excavated, 190 were inscribed. The inscriptions were of 9 types. The most common, occurring on the most complete inventory of vessels, was the inscription Fu Hao (or Zi ), found on 109 vessels. The next most common was the inscription Si Tu Mu, occurring on 26 ritual bronzes, including one pair each of the square hu-jars, round jia-tripods, and round zun-beakers, one set of 11 gu-goblets, and one set of 9 jue-beakers. There was also a pair of large square zun-beakers inscribed with 4 characters, one line containing the characters Si Tu Mu, all written backwards, the other containing the character gui; including these there are 28 examples. The dating of these vessels is essentially the same as that of those vessels inscribed Fu Hao. It is very seldom that we find such a large number of vessels with the same inscription unearthed from the ritual bronze vessel horde of a single tomb. Bronzes with this inscription have been recorded since the Song dynasty and a bronze with this type of inscription was excavated from a Shang tomb at Xiaotun before liberation. There is also a bronze yue-axe with this inscription that currently exists. The study of this group of bronzes is very important.

In analyzing the inscription Si (Hou) Tu Mu Gui, one possible interpretation is that Tu Mu was the cognomen (Zi )of Fu Hao; another, is that it referred to a person close to Fu Hao in position. The inscription can be explained as Tu Mu, whose day name was Gui, or Mu Gui, whose name was Tu. She may have been another queen of Wu Ding, perhaps the Mu Gui sacrificed to in the Zu Geng and Zu Jia inscriptions, i.e., the Bi Gui who was the legitimate consort of Wu Ding in the Di Yi and Di Xin cyclical sacrifice records. Assuming this hypothesis is correct, then objects belonging to consorts Bi Xin and Bi Gui of Wu Ding have already been discovered. Since the discovery of the Fu Hao tomb, some scholars have put forth the theory that Mu Wu mentioned on the large inscribed Si Mu Wu ding-tripod may be Wu Ding's consort, Bi Wu. If the conclusions reached above can be established, then ritual bronze vessels belonging to all three of Wu Ding's consorts have been discovered. This fact is significant both for the study of the Shang ritual system and of the ritual bronzes.

The following letter, received on 25 March 1985, was written by Dr. Michael Friedrich and Dr. Michael Lackner. Further correspondence may be addressed to them at the Institut für Ostasienkunde – Sinologie, Universität München, Trautenwolfstrasse 3, 8000 München 40, Federal Republic of Germany.

We submit the following as a belated addendum to the debate on the concept of wu-hsing in Early China 2 (1976) and 3 (1977).

First, we should like to point out that the whole debate is obviously based on a narrowly modern conception of “element,” which only covers one tenth of the history of the term. The following passages should help to remedy this regrettable neglect of the broader and chronologically more significant meaning of the concept. They are drawn directly from original sources rather than from works such as Needham's, which has already been overworked for this purpose.

(N.B. A version of this paper has now been published in Kaogu 1983.6:537-41.)

Fu Hao (or Fu Zi ) appears in the oracle-bone inscriptions from Anyang. The name is often seen in Period I inscriptions (from the time of Wu Ding) and occasionally in Period IV inscriptions (from the time of Wu Yi and Wen Ding). The two are separated by four kings (Zu Geng, Zu Jia, Lin Xin, and Kang Ding), perhaps by as much as one hundred years. Does the Fu Hao in both periods refer to the same person? How can we explain this phenomenon?

In the oracle-bone records of people and their activities there are cases where one figure is active in different periods. These names are often also place names, and these figures possess a populace and products. These names are probably what is termed “Clan-Territory titles” (a term found in the Gu shi kao, as quoted in the “Zheng yi” commentary to the Zuo zhuan). Based on their clan name they served hereditarily as officials. These clan names occur in historical literature, as in “In the past, our former kings were for generations Lords of Millet (Hou Ji ), serving under the Yü and Xia “(Guo yü “Zhou Yü” ); or “The Zhong and Li clans generation after generation ordered heaven and earth, … the Sima clan for generation after generation was in charge of the history of Zhou” (Shi ji, “Taishigong zixu” ).

This paper presents the results of a series of experiments attempting to determine the methods of selection, preparation, and use of turtle shell and cattle bone materials for divination during the Late Shang period. Specific topics covered include selection, preparation, drilling of burning-pits and application of heat, the reading by the diviners of the resulting cracks, the function of the historian's first writing the divination data on the bone before it was inscribed, the reason the cracks and divination data were carved into the bone and why pigment was applied to them, the actual inscription-carving technique, the result of experiments on methods of softening bones and shells, and preparing bronze and jade inscription-carving knives. I have examined excavation reports and earlier publications by scholars in the field and compared them with my own results in order to gain more complete understanding of the actual process of Late Shang oracle-bone divination. In the course of carrying out these experiments, I have made a number of discoveries which I hope may fill in some of the gaps that still exist in oraclebone studies after eighty-three years.

This paper takes issue with the widely prevailing assumption that the “charge” (ming ci) in a Shang oracle inscription must always be understood as a question. I hold that we must distinguish between what the diviner is saying in the charge, and what he is doing in the whole divination rite. What he is doing is not always seeking information; and even when he is doing this, what he says is usually not a question. I present various arguments and examples to show this, e.g.:

(1) Li Hsüeh-ch'in's research proves that the oracle language possessed grammatical forms, such as final particles and final negatives, for marking a sentence as a question. Therefore, I hold, our first assumption should be that when a diviner does not use these forms, he does not intend his sentence to be understood as a question.

(2) When two sentences in the same inscription -- e.g., charge and prognostication -- are alike in form (both of them being without final negatives or particles), it is a mistake to construe one of them as a question and the other as a statement. But a prognostication must be a statement.

The method of divining by yarrow stalk in accordance with the scheme of 64 hexagrams did exist in the Yin Dynasty. Numerical strings of three and six lines on oracle bones recently unearthed provide the new evidence for the above statement and many scholars have discussed it. My paper contributes the following new points:

(1) Comparing the 64 hexagram names in the Ma-wang-tui manuscript with those appearing in the so called Kuei-tsang () recorded by later scholars, we find some similarity on both sides. This indicates that the Kuei-tsang is not a legendary matter.

(2) Some Hsin-tien period wares found in Kansu also show the numerical marks such as . This also suggests that such trigram images had been used by still earlier people.

(3) The graph for nine “” was found on one oracle bone from Ch'i-chia . It shows that the Western Chou people had advanced the way of divining and thus the emphasis on Yin of the Yin people had been developed into the emphasis on Yang .

(4) I try to interpret, with reference to the sentences of Chou-yi, the divining hexagrams which appear on the bamboo strips found in T'ien-hsing-kuan , Chiang-ling . As the symbol of was still employed by the Ch'u people, it seems that they were following the way of the Yin people in the emphasis on Yin.

The authors see their paper as an attempt to analyze Shang meteorology through statistics, but explicitly not to reconstruct Shang weather. It is essentially an amplified study of the oracle-bone record along the lines pioneered by Wittfogel in his “Meteorological Records from the Divination Inscriptions of Shang” (1940), which has been followed up by contributions from Chinese scholars, notably Hu Houxuan. Compiling the data into a graph, the authors, whose research is still preliminary, conclude that during Shang times, there was more rainfall, that it took place during every month of the year, and that the weather was warmer.

This paper assembles three oracle-bone inscriptions divined at the same time from the Wu Yi-Wen Ding period. Two are identical, being a paired divination inquiring into whether the event ri yue you shi was or was not auspicious. The third asks whether, in light of this ri yue you shi, it would be auspicious to sacrifice to Shang Jia.

Since 1925, when Wang Xiang , first proposed th at the character yue should be read as xi, his position has been accepted by Liu Chaoyang De Xiaoqian , Chen Mengijia , Zhang Peiyü , Xu Zhentao , the Zhongguo Tianwenxue jianshi bianxiezu , and the Zhongguo Tianwenxueshi zhengli yenjiu xiaozu

Yue was first interpreted as yue in 1933 by Shang Chengzuo . Those subscribing to this reading include Dong Zuobin , Chen Zungui , Yü Xingwu Liu Chaoyang, Chen Mengiia, Joseph Needham, Zhao Quemin and Chen Banghuai .

Among these scholars Liu Chaoyang holds that “there is no distinction between xi and yue,” while Chen Mengjia believes that the phrase “ri yue you shi” can also be read “ri xi you shi,” hence they accept both interpretations.

In the Shang, time was represented by a system of combining shi gan (ten stem signs) and shi-er zhi (twelve branch signs), a complete cycle taking sixty days.

Many interpretations, some dating back to the Han period, have been made as to the meaning of the signs. I question the suitability of these theories and, using the original meaning of the characters together with different words of similar sound propose the possibility of a systematic interpretation. Shi gan symbolize stages in the development of a barley seed from germination in the earth to fruition, while shi-er zhi are taken to be stages from the conception of a child up to acceptance into the family. The cycle of the two sets of signs represents the idea of the diffusion of two forces within the cosmos: that which gives life to plants and all living things and that which gives them form and substance. Attention is also drawn to the relationship of the former with sun-worship and to that of the latter with moon-worship.

All translations or interpretations of the Shang oracular texts are ultimately founded on the way in which one understands the system of the early Chinese writing and its underlying principles. This writing system cannot be fully understood unless the study of the graphic structure of each writing unit is combined with that of all other factors that can be observed from the point of view of semantic content and phonology. A short discussion of these three aspects or factors in the writing system is intended to show that any graphic analysis from the very beginning needs to consider the word that is represented by the graphic unit and to determine it in meaning(s) and pronunciation(s), grammatical function(s), and its relationship with other words, whether cognates, synonyms or homonyms, liable to be used as loan units ( ). The graphic analysis must not only explain the pictographic aspects of the graphs, but also determine the possible phonetic, semantic, or etymonic roles played by any of its constituent parts. In this respect, processes like polyphony, polysemy, graphic convergence and confusions, and loan graph substitutions all require vigorous scrutiny from the point of view of the phonology of the Shang language. Besides using information from later bronze texts, classics, and early dictionaries, it is important to let the Shang data speak for themselves.