I've noticed the latest anonymous edits made to differentiate the Late Shang from the Yin. What's the standard here? For my part I've always referred to them as Late Shang. Elijahmeeks 17:36, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
This page should be named Oracle Bone Script; I can't recall any academic calling it 'oracle script'. Dragonbones 13:44, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
In line 1 of the Oracle bone script page, "Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; Hanyu Pinyin: jiǎgǔwén; literally "shell bone writing")", the pinyin "jiaguwen" looks very ugly on my screen, with odd spacing and an odd font. What gives? I tried replacing it but to no avail. Dragonbones 08:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I would like to caution fellow editors against confusing the following: 1) signs or symbols found on early artifacts but for which there is not scholarly consensus as to whether they constitute writing. The Neolithic pottery graphs in China fall into this category. (I follow Qiu here; see also Woon) 2) isolated graphs which are close enough in appearance and in time to the writing system of the Shang, but which predate the Anyang oracle bones. There are at least one or two instances like this (see Qiu), so that it is not accurate to say that the Anyang OB are 'the earliest writing' in China. Keeping both of these in mind, we can see that despite the presence of the Neolithic graphs, we cannot safely conclude that they are the earliest 'writing'; and we can also see that the only safe conclusion on the oracle bones of Anyang is that they are the earliest 'significant corpus' of Chinese writing. I have been careful to incorporate this on the various relevant Wiki pages. Dragonbones
The dates for the Yin (Anyang) period and thus for the majority of the oracle bone and shell inscriptions should be from the 14th to the 11th centuries BC, not 13th to the 11th centuries BC. See for example Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilisation, page 41 and page 688. I have made the relevant change. - cyl
I don't see any reason to have a separate article for Oracle bone. Their interlanguage links are basically same. -- Neo-Jay ( talk) 02:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
The unreferenced citation of Zhengzhou oracle bones dating to earlier in the dynasty was recently removed, which is quite reasonable given the lack of citations and lack of detail or links. On the other hand, we do need to dig up the information on the pre-Anyang inscribed bones, no? So that serves as a good prod for me, cheers! Here is what Qiu Xigui 2000 p. 41 has: "Two pieces of bone bearing graphs were also discovered at Erligang (Kexue Press 1959:38, also Fig. 30). One of them is engraved with only one graph, namely, the character "ㄓ" (the character "ㄓ" appears in late period Shang oracle bone inscriptions) and was unearthed from a pre-Shang layer. The other piece is of uncertain provenance and bears ten or more characters; the graphic forms on it are similar to those found in late Shang oracle bone script, but their pattern of usage is rather unique."
Personally, I think that a single graph from a pre-Shang layer, when there is no other evidence of pre-Shang OB, implies disturbance of the layers just as readily as it implies pre-Shang OB writing, but of course the latter is possible too, given that there are textual references to Xia writing. Whatever we do with this kind of info, I do hope we remain cautious and yet fair in its presentation. Dragonbones ( talk) 14:51, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
There have been significant changes since the Start-class rating. Please have another look and consider revising the rating if appropriate. Dragonbones ( talk) 09:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
The 'mourning' character which is given as an example is DEFINITELY not an oracle bone graph so I am removing it. First, I looked up sang1 喪 in my oracle bones book by Zhao Cheng and found (p. 334) 桑 being used as a loan to mean mourn, but the form is quite different from the example given on the OBS page. I checked another OB dictionary and got the same result so did some searching, and suspect that someone built a CGI/SVG based on Richard Sears's bronze exemplar b01725 but then uploaded it incorrectly as an oracle bone graph (if so, it is an error by the CGI/SVG builder/uploader, and I assume that the linkage to this page was thus an innocent mistake). Not only is it not OB, it is not even representative W. Zhou bronze! it's a variant form AFAIK. The typical OB to mid Zhou forms have branching tree images with 3 to 6 口 added, not 止 added, and the bottom is normally a triple root. Here is a better facsimile of 合集1083 oracle bone graph of sang1 'mourn' and 'mulberry': http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/2467/sang1mournheji1083lk1.jpg. As for the incorrect example on the page now, after a search of bronze archives, I have found the source: it is from the 小臣鼎(昜鼎) vessel, AcSin catalogue number 02678 西周中期 Middle Western Zhou bronze. I would reproduce the rubbing here for you but don't have permission, sorry. If someone has time to build some SVG please be sure to get a real OB rubbing or photo to base it on. Thanks! Dragonbones ( talk) 15:06, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
To the editors defacing mainspace articles with pinyin: kindly knock it off.
English does not include pinyin tones and transliterated tonal Chinese text shows up in italics. Names are written without tones, so if it's important to you include the Chinese characters alongside the English transcription.
Issues like Zhou and Shang are non-starters as they're already (toneless) English words. (cf. WP:ENGLISH, WP:COMMONNAME, WP:NC-ZH#Characters, WP:MOS-ZH#Tones, &c... &c...) — LlywelynII 05:24, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
A couple of months ago a paragraph was added about Benedict and Nishida's suggestion (revived by DeLancey) that the Shang spoke a non-Sino-Tibetan language, but their script was taken over by the ST-speaking Zhou. This isn't widely accepted, and I'm not sure it should be included, but if it is we should present it accurately, rather than trying to water it down.
Even further out of the mainstream is Beckwith's theory of an Indo-European basis for Chinese—as far as I can tell it isn't considered a possibility by anyone else (though it's widely accepted that some Old Chinese words were borrowed from IE). The reviews of Beckwith's book are particularly critical of his linguistic proposals:
I suggest it should be removed as fringe. Similarly, although there has been a long-standing debate about whether the Chinese invention of writing was completely independent of the much earlier Middle-Eastern development, Beckwith's suggested IE transmission of the idea of writing seems farfetched, given that the Indo-Europeans in the area had no writing at that time. Kanguole 01:48, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Oracle bone script/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
There have been significant changes since the Start-class rating. Please have another look and consider revising the rating if appropriate. Dragonbones ( talk) 09:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC) |
Last edited at 09:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 20:10, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
The term "oracle bone" does not translate into the Chinese term 甲骨. Anyone with any knowledge of modern Chinese should be able to see that. 甲 refers to the carapace of an animal, while 骨 refers to bone. Thus, the purported 1930's "borrowing" of the term "oracle bone" into Chinese as 甲骨 can't possibly be correct: the term 甲骨 is a native term for shell-and-bone. Also, the term 卜辞 is a common synonym. This is common knowledge, and one does not need a source (check any book title for modern studies of oracle bone writing in Chinese, 卜辞 tends to be a more academic term. e.g. Guo Moruo (郭沫若) 《卜辞通纂》)
Please revert my correction. I have removed the factually incorrect statement for now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alsosaid1987 ( talk • contribs) 19:17, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
@White whirlwind: I cited a monograph title and dictionary entry, and wrote a footnote on common typographical practice. How do these constitute primary sources quote unquote original research in any way? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alsosaid1987 ( talk • contribs) 02:27, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
The article of Oracle Bone Script is a bit strange. It showed that it is the oldest Chinese Writing. But, shouldn't Tao wen be the oldest chinese writing? Here is my reason on why it should be: According to Baidu (It's wikipedia) and Chinese Wikipedia (Yes I know chinese) Tao wen(I don't know if it is really called like that) is the oldest chinese writing. It clearly shows that the writing was made 4500 years ago (2500 BC) while Oracle Bone script was just made around 1250 BC to 1200 BC. I don't know if I'm correct or not, but I should be.
Also, I don't think there is a page about Tao Wen in english yet. If anyone could help me create one, thank you. And one more thing, Tao Wen literally means Pottery language in english.
Sincerely, 10Jasejustestingzapppp ( talk) 08:39, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
The first and second references in the article don't have a link and simply say "Shen 2002." I admittedly have only made a handful of attempts to search for a paper with that author name and year, but have not found anything related to the Yinxu site, which is what the source is cited as confirmation of. Cleath78 ( talk) 03:31, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
I've noticed the latest anonymous edits made to differentiate the Late Shang from the Yin. What's the standard here? For my part I've always referred to them as Late Shang. Elijahmeeks 17:36, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
This page should be named Oracle Bone Script; I can't recall any academic calling it 'oracle script'. Dragonbones 13:44, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
In line 1 of the Oracle bone script page, "Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; Hanyu Pinyin: jiǎgǔwén; literally "shell bone writing")", the pinyin "jiaguwen" looks very ugly on my screen, with odd spacing and an odd font. What gives? I tried replacing it but to no avail. Dragonbones 08:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I would like to caution fellow editors against confusing the following: 1) signs or symbols found on early artifacts but for which there is not scholarly consensus as to whether they constitute writing. The Neolithic pottery graphs in China fall into this category. (I follow Qiu here; see also Woon) 2) isolated graphs which are close enough in appearance and in time to the writing system of the Shang, but which predate the Anyang oracle bones. There are at least one or two instances like this (see Qiu), so that it is not accurate to say that the Anyang OB are 'the earliest writing' in China. Keeping both of these in mind, we can see that despite the presence of the Neolithic graphs, we cannot safely conclude that they are the earliest 'writing'; and we can also see that the only safe conclusion on the oracle bones of Anyang is that they are the earliest 'significant corpus' of Chinese writing. I have been careful to incorporate this on the various relevant Wiki pages. Dragonbones
The dates for the Yin (Anyang) period and thus for the majority of the oracle bone and shell inscriptions should be from the 14th to the 11th centuries BC, not 13th to the 11th centuries BC. See for example Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilisation, page 41 and page 688. I have made the relevant change. - cyl
I don't see any reason to have a separate article for Oracle bone. Their interlanguage links are basically same. -- Neo-Jay ( talk) 02:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
The unreferenced citation of Zhengzhou oracle bones dating to earlier in the dynasty was recently removed, which is quite reasonable given the lack of citations and lack of detail or links. On the other hand, we do need to dig up the information on the pre-Anyang inscribed bones, no? So that serves as a good prod for me, cheers! Here is what Qiu Xigui 2000 p. 41 has: "Two pieces of bone bearing graphs were also discovered at Erligang (Kexue Press 1959:38, also Fig. 30). One of them is engraved with only one graph, namely, the character "ㄓ" (the character "ㄓ" appears in late period Shang oracle bone inscriptions) and was unearthed from a pre-Shang layer. The other piece is of uncertain provenance and bears ten or more characters; the graphic forms on it are similar to those found in late Shang oracle bone script, but their pattern of usage is rather unique."
Personally, I think that a single graph from a pre-Shang layer, when there is no other evidence of pre-Shang OB, implies disturbance of the layers just as readily as it implies pre-Shang OB writing, but of course the latter is possible too, given that there are textual references to Xia writing. Whatever we do with this kind of info, I do hope we remain cautious and yet fair in its presentation. Dragonbones ( talk) 14:51, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
There have been significant changes since the Start-class rating. Please have another look and consider revising the rating if appropriate. Dragonbones ( talk) 09:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
The 'mourning' character which is given as an example is DEFINITELY not an oracle bone graph so I am removing it. First, I looked up sang1 喪 in my oracle bones book by Zhao Cheng and found (p. 334) 桑 being used as a loan to mean mourn, but the form is quite different from the example given on the OBS page. I checked another OB dictionary and got the same result so did some searching, and suspect that someone built a CGI/SVG based on Richard Sears's bronze exemplar b01725 but then uploaded it incorrectly as an oracle bone graph (if so, it is an error by the CGI/SVG builder/uploader, and I assume that the linkage to this page was thus an innocent mistake). Not only is it not OB, it is not even representative W. Zhou bronze! it's a variant form AFAIK. The typical OB to mid Zhou forms have branching tree images with 3 to 6 口 added, not 止 added, and the bottom is normally a triple root. Here is a better facsimile of 合集1083 oracle bone graph of sang1 'mourn' and 'mulberry': http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/2467/sang1mournheji1083lk1.jpg. As for the incorrect example on the page now, after a search of bronze archives, I have found the source: it is from the 小臣鼎(昜鼎) vessel, AcSin catalogue number 02678 西周中期 Middle Western Zhou bronze. I would reproduce the rubbing here for you but don't have permission, sorry. If someone has time to build some SVG please be sure to get a real OB rubbing or photo to base it on. Thanks! Dragonbones ( talk) 15:06, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
To the editors defacing mainspace articles with pinyin: kindly knock it off.
English does not include pinyin tones and transliterated tonal Chinese text shows up in italics. Names are written without tones, so if it's important to you include the Chinese characters alongside the English transcription.
Issues like Zhou and Shang are non-starters as they're already (toneless) English words. (cf. WP:ENGLISH, WP:COMMONNAME, WP:NC-ZH#Characters, WP:MOS-ZH#Tones, &c... &c...) — LlywelynII 05:24, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
A couple of months ago a paragraph was added about Benedict and Nishida's suggestion (revived by DeLancey) that the Shang spoke a non-Sino-Tibetan language, but their script was taken over by the ST-speaking Zhou. This isn't widely accepted, and I'm not sure it should be included, but if it is we should present it accurately, rather than trying to water it down.
Even further out of the mainstream is Beckwith's theory of an Indo-European basis for Chinese—as far as I can tell it isn't considered a possibility by anyone else (though it's widely accepted that some Old Chinese words were borrowed from IE). The reviews of Beckwith's book are particularly critical of his linguistic proposals:
I suggest it should be removed as fringe. Similarly, although there has been a long-standing debate about whether the Chinese invention of writing was completely independent of the much earlier Middle-Eastern development, Beckwith's suggested IE transmission of the idea of writing seems farfetched, given that the Indo-Europeans in the area had no writing at that time. Kanguole 01:48, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Oracle bone script/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
There have been significant changes since the Start-class rating. Please have another look and consider revising the rating if appropriate. Dragonbones ( talk) 09:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC) |
Last edited at 09:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 20:10, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
The term "oracle bone" does not translate into the Chinese term 甲骨. Anyone with any knowledge of modern Chinese should be able to see that. 甲 refers to the carapace of an animal, while 骨 refers to bone. Thus, the purported 1930's "borrowing" of the term "oracle bone" into Chinese as 甲骨 can't possibly be correct: the term 甲骨 is a native term for shell-and-bone. Also, the term 卜辞 is a common synonym. This is common knowledge, and one does not need a source (check any book title for modern studies of oracle bone writing in Chinese, 卜辞 tends to be a more academic term. e.g. Guo Moruo (郭沫若) 《卜辞通纂》)
Please revert my correction. I have removed the factually incorrect statement for now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alsosaid1987 ( talk • contribs) 19:17, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
@White whirlwind: I cited a monograph title and dictionary entry, and wrote a footnote on common typographical practice. How do these constitute primary sources quote unquote original research in any way? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alsosaid1987 ( talk • contribs) 02:27, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
The article of Oracle Bone Script is a bit strange. It showed that it is the oldest Chinese Writing. But, shouldn't Tao wen be the oldest chinese writing? Here is my reason on why it should be: According to Baidu (It's wikipedia) and Chinese Wikipedia (Yes I know chinese) Tao wen(I don't know if it is really called like that) is the oldest chinese writing. It clearly shows that the writing was made 4500 years ago (2500 BC) while Oracle Bone script was just made around 1250 BC to 1200 BC. I don't know if I'm correct or not, but I should be.
Also, I don't think there is a page about Tao Wen in english yet. If anyone could help me create one, thank you. And one more thing, Tao Wen literally means Pottery language in english.
Sincerely, 10Jasejustestingzapppp ( talk) 08:39, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
The first and second references in the article don't have a link and simply say "Shen 2002." I admittedly have only made a handful of attempts to search for a paper with that author name and year, but have not found anything related to the Yinxu site, which is what the source is cited as confirmation of. Cleath78 ( talk) 03:31, 30 June 2023 (UTC)