Oracle bone script excerpts for reading

Author: Wang Yuxin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: The selected pieces in this book are copied from the original artifacts. Most of the copies are the same size as the originals, while a few are reduced by a certain proportion. In the annotations, all characters that can be identified as modern Chinese are presented in traditional characters to make them more similar to the forms of oracle bone script, facilitating reading. For characters that cannot be accurately deciphered at present, we retain their original forms and await future identification. For controversial characters, we adopt the opinions of experts such as Guo Moruo, Wang Xingwu, Hu Houxuan, etc., while also incorporating the research findings of other scholars. The classification of oracle bone script in this book still follows the commonly used five-period division. To enable readers to correspond the pieces in this book with the original book and use them as a to find related content, we have compiled a comparison table as Appendix I. The table lists the book's numbering, the plate number of each piece in the original book, and its era. Additionally, we have prepared a stroke index for characters as Appendix II. The single characters encountered in the book are arranged in order of strokes. For some common compound characters, such as months, titles, and names, they are arranged by the stroke count of the main character. For the convenience of beginners, standardized simplified characters are provided in parentheses after some traditional characters.