Who knocked on the underground "gate" of the Shang Dynasty?

In October 1928, in Xiaotun Village, northwest of Anyang City, archaeologist Dong Zuobin swung the first shovel, marking the beginning of the excavation of Yinxu by Chinese archaeologists...

Dong Zuobin (1895-1963), whose original name was Shouren, whose courtesy name was Yantang, also known as Yantang and Pinglu, was a native of Nanyang, Henan Province. He was an oracle bone scholar and ancient historian. He was known as one of the "Four Masters of Oracle Bones" along with Luo Zhenyu, Wang Guowei and Guo Moruo.

Over the past 90 years since then, generations of archaeologists have worked hard and continued to present the 3,000-year-old Shang civilization to the world in a true and three-dimensional way.

Newly Acquired Oracle Inscriptions: The Beginning of the Rise of Oracle Bone Studies

New materials are the cornerstone of new knowledge, especially for oracle bone studies, which uses underground unearthed cultural relics as research materials. The early period of oracle bone studies from 1899 to 1928 was a period of private collection and personal research of oracle bone materials, and nearly half of the oracle bone fragments were lost overseas. Many scholars rarely saw the real oracle bones, let alone studied them. It was Dong Zuobin who sorted out and published all the unearthed oracle bone fragments, providing the academic community with precious and rich research materials.

In 1928, under the leadership of Dong Zuobin, the first excavation of Yinxu lasted 18 days and yielded 555 tortoise shells with inscriptions, 299 bone fragments with inscriptions, a total of 854 pieces, as well as nearly 3,000 artifacts made of bronze, pottery, bone, clam, stone, and jade.

Dong Zuobin selected 392 pieces from the 854 pieces of oracle bones unearthed, and copied them with a total of 381 codes, which were recorded as "Newly Obtained Oracle Inscriptions Manuscripts".

As China's first record of scientifically excavated oracle bones, the publication of "Newly Acquired Oracle Inscriptions" proved that Chinese scholars could use scientific means and methods to independently conduct archaeological excavations of ancient cultural sites and achieve results, while keeping such precious materials as oracle bones in the hands of the Chinese people themselves.

The publication of this catalogue broke the previous situation where oracle bone inscriptions could only be studied privately by a few oracle bone collectors. Therefore, once it was published, it immediately caused a great response, and many related discussion articles emerged in a short period of time, covering the history of the Shang Dynasty, the interpretation of oracle bone inscriptions, the underground knowledge of Yinxu, and the research of related unearthed cultural relics. It was the beginning of the rise of the entire oracle bone study discipline.

In addition, the copies of the "Newly Acquired Oracle Inscriptions" are numbered in sequence for easy retrieval. At the same time, the pit locations of this batch of unearthed oracle bones are recorded in combination with modern archaeological knowledge. This recording method is unprecedented and has become one of the models for the recording method of oracle bone inscriptions.

"Part A" and "Part B": Breaking through the barriers of focusing only on words

From the first trial excavation of Yinxu to June 1937, the Yinxu site in Anyang was excavated 15 times in 10 years. These 15 excavations discovered abundant relics and sites, and most importantly, obtained a large number of oracle bones.

These oracle bones were sorted out under the supervision of Dong Zuobin and finally recorded as "Yinxu Characters Volume A" and "Yinxu Characters Volume B" (hereinafter referred to as "Volume A" and "Volume B").

"Compilation A" was compiled after the 9th excavation in 1934. A total of 6531 plates were obtained from the 1st to the 9th excavation of Yinxu. "Compilation A" was compiled by selecting 2476 pieces of character shells and 1399 pieces of character bones from them.

The second volume was written after the first volume, and included oracle bones from the 13th to 15th excavations of Yinxu. Although only three excavations were conducted, the number of oracle bones was more than four times that of the first volume, with a total of 18,405 pieces of oracle bones. The locations of the excavated bones were concise and clear, and the content was novel and rich. The 9105th volume was selected and published in three volumes: upper, middle, and lower.

The "A" and "B" volumes contain a total of 13,047 pieces of oracle bones, which was the largest number of oracle bone fragments at the time. From the names of the records to the compilation style and editing process, they are significantly different from previous oracle bone records. Each volume has two parts: "Illustrations" and "Explanations". The illustrations are printed first, and the explanations are released later. The purpose is to publish new materials first, so that scholars who are eagerly waiting can see these precious materials as soon as possible, so as to start analysis and research as soon as possible.

Dong Zuobin compiled the oracle bones obtained from scientific excavations at Yinxu into "Compilation A" and "Compilation B" and published them, making a significant contribution to the publication of oracle bone materials. At the same time, he focused on the description of the relevant terrain, pit locations, and accompanying relics and remains from the unearthed oracle bones in the arrangement of the materials, which also made these two books of important archaeological significance.

Archaeologist Li Ji commented that from then on, oracle bone research broke through the barriers of traditional epigraphy that only focused on text and ignored the relics and remains that were found together with the text.

Study on the Yin and Shang Dynasty Chronicles: Establishing the Oracle Bone Inscription System

The Anti-Japanese War period was the most difficult stage in the development of Chinese archaeology. Not only was the field excavation of the Yin Ruins in Anyang interrupted, but research work was also greatly affected.

During this period, the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica where Dong Zuobin worked moved several times, but he never gave up his research on oracle bone inscriptions, and he compiled and restored the Shang Dynasty calendar based on the oracle bone records.

The origin of this research can be traced back to 1930. At that time, he took notes on the calendar data in the oracle bone inscriptions and wrote a series of articles related to the calendar, such as "The Yin Calendar Seen in Oracle Inscriptions" and "Several Important Issues in the Yin Calendar". In particular, "A Study on the Chronology of Oracle Bones" published in 1932 set the criteria for dating oracle bone inscriptions as lineage, title, diviner, pit position, state, person, event, grammar, character shape, and writing style, and divided the era of oracle bone inscriptions into five periods.

The publication of this article was a landmark event in the study of oracle bones. It made the 150,000 pieces of oracle bones, which had been in chaos in the past, become historical data that could be divided into five different periods, and established the study of the historical culture of the late Shang Dynasty on a relatively scientific basis.

Some researchers have pointed out that although the "Five-period Division" and "Ten Criteria" still need to be supplemented and revised, they are still widely used in the academic community. The dating theory has greatly improved the historical value of oracle bone inscriptions and pushed oracle bone inscription research to a new stage, which is of far-reaching significance.

Dong Zuobin began writing "Yin Calendar" in 1934 and completed it in 1945. During this period, he revised the manuscript several times, which shows how hard it was to write.

He studied the Shang calendar, widely applied new technologies, and used modern astronomical records of solar and lunar eclipses to verify them. He clarified the order of succession during the Shang Dynasty, examined the actual number of years of the Shang Dynasty's rule, and the exact year when the Zhou Dynasty destroyed the Shang Dynasty, providing rich data for historical research.

Scholar Yan Yiping once said: "Over the past fifty years, after countless scholars' research efforts, the only one who was able to summarize and establish the oracle bone system was Mr. Yantang."