Oracle bone inscription

Japanese: 甲骨文 - こうこつぶん

These are characters carved on tortoise shells and animal bones used for divination in the ancient Chinese Yin dynasty. They were carved into flat tortoise shells and animal bones with a sharp knife. Many of them have been excavated from the Yin ruins, and they list the names of successive kings of the Yin dynasty, whose order roughly matches the lineage of the documents. The articles are about divination words that diviners wrote by looking at the cracks (omens) that appeared when the underside of the tortoise shells and animal bones was heated with fire, and they relate to rituals, wars, hunting, disease, life and death, rainmaking, and fertility. They were studied and deciphered by Luo Zhenyu, Wang Guowei, and others in the late Qing dynasty, and further developed after the revolution with excavations by the Academia Sinica led by Dong Zuobin. In recent years, divination shells and divination bones from the early Western Zhou period have been discovered in several locations, attracting attention.
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Source : Heibonsha Encyclopedia About MyPedia Information

Japanese:

おもに古代中国の殷(いん)で占いに使った亀甲(きっこう)や獣骨に刻まれた文字。平らに削った亀甲・獣骨に鋭利な刀子(とうす)で彫られている。殷墟から出土するものが多く，これらには殷の歴代の王名が記され，その順位は文献の世系とほぼ一致する。記事は，亀甲・獣骨に裏面から火を当てて入ったひび（兆）を見て，卜師(ぼくし)が，占いの言葉を書いたもので，祭祀，戦争，田猟，疾病，生死，雨乞，豊凶などに関する。清末の羅振玉，王国維などによって研究・解読され，革命後董作賓を中心とする中央研究院の発掘によって甲骨学はさらに発展した。また近年，西周時代初年の卜甲・卜骨がいくつかの地点で発見され，注目されている。
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