Oracle Bone Dictionary

Author: Xu Zhongshu, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-12-11
Features:
Mr. Xu Zhongshu is a renowned historian and paleographer in China. He was admitted to the Tsinghua Institute early in his career and studied Chinese ancient history and paleography under famous scholars such as Wang Guowei and Liang Qichao. Wang, Liang, and others were giants of academia, whose knowledge spanned both ancient and modern times and covered a wide range of disciplines. Mr. Xu inherited their scholarly approach, developed a broad academic path, and achieved high proficiency in pre-Qin history, Chinese paleography, archaeology, ethnology, and the history of Sichuan. He has nurtured a large number of students and achieved remarkable accomplishments, making indelible contributions to the advancement of academic research.
Chinese paleography is a relatively challenging field, often perceived as mysterious by the general public. The study of paleography involves many related disciplines, so achieving success in this field is not easy. Mr. Xu has made globally acclaimed achievements in this area. The Dictionary of Oracle Bone Characters is Mr. Xu’s main contribution to paleographic research. Since the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions at Yinxu, over 100,000 pieces have been unearthed, with the majority recorded in books. Currently, more than 5,000 unique oracle bone characters have been identified, and after decades of academic effort, over 1,000 of them have been deciphered. The remaining undeciphered characters, as they largely consist of proper nouns such as names and places, have little impact on the overall reading of oracle bone inscriptions. Thus, it can be said that most oracle bone inscriptions are now basically readable.
To facilitate the study of oracle bone characters and related disciplines, scholars have been compiling reference books on oracle bone characters since the 1930s. Important representative works in this field include, in terms of character forms, The Oracle Bone Character Compendium compiled by Sun Haibo in the 1930s and The Continuation of the Oracle Bone Character Compendium revised by Jin Xiangheng in the 1960s, both of which made significant contributions to the organization of oracle bone character forms. In terms of interpretation, The Collected Interpretations of Oracle Bone Characters by Li Xiaojing, published in the 1960s, is a comprehensive toolbook that gathers various interpretations, offers balanced evaluations, and presents innovative insights, making it a valuable resource for academic research. However, these reference books each have their own biases. The Oracle Bone Character Compendium and The Continuation merely list character forms without explanations, making them unsuitable for beginners. The Collected Interpretations focuses on explanations but provides brief character forms, failing to reveal the evolution of characters. Moreover, none of these books organize oracle bone characters chronologically.
Since the 1960s, oracle bone studies have made significant progress, with numerous achievements emerging, all in need of organization and compilation to benefit academic research. In this context, there was an urgent need for a comprehensive reference book that reflected the new level of oracle bone research. Thus, The Dictionary of Oracle Bone Characters was born under Mr. Xu’s direct leadership.
The Dictionary of Oracle Bone Characters not only extensively incorporates recent research findings but also integrates Mr. Xu’s decades of insights into oracle bone studies. It features a unique and innovative compilation system with precise interpretations and appropriate examples. Its key strengths are as follows:
1. Combining the Strengths of Various Works and Creating an Advanced Compilation System
The dictionary explains oracle bone characters in three parts: character forms, basic meanings, and interpretations. The character forms section includes representative oracle bone characters, the basic meanings section explains the original and extended meanings of characters, and the interpretations section lists representative phrases to illustrate the various meanings of characters in the specific linguistic context of the Shang Dynasty. These three sections are organically linked, providing readers with a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of oracle bone characters.
2. Character Collection and Arrangement
The dictionary first compiles all oracle bone characters and selects representative forms, ensuring that even though the number of characters is not large, each one serves as a representative of ten. The arrangement of character forms is chronological, divided into five periods and listed under each character. This allows readers to trace the evolution of oracle bone characters, observe the stylistic variations of different periods, and gain a thorough grasp of character forms, a feature absent in any previous paleographic reference books.
3. Interpretation of Character Meanings
The dictionary draws on the strengths of various interpretations, avoiding narrow perspectives and adopting a pragmatic approach. It also incorporates Mr. Xu’s decades of academic achievements in oracle bone studies, comprehensively examining characters in terms of form, sound, and meaning, yielding numerous innovative insights.
4. Scientific Interpretation Methods
The dictionary fully reflects Mr. Xu’s scientific methods for interpreting ancient characters, emphasizing the interconnections between characters and resolving many long-standing academic issues. For example, previous scholars did not fully recognize that the oracle bone characters for “small” () and “few” () were the same, leading to the interpretation of only those with “small” radicals, such as “small ” (), “small ” (), “small ” (), and “small ” (), while omitting many with “few” radicals. The dictionary, based on the fundamental principles of paleography, points out that “small” and “few” were originally the same character, breaking free from the constraints of form and interpreting characters with “few” radicals, such as “small ” () and “small ” ().
Another example is the character “” (bìn), which Mr. Xu interpreted early in his career. At the time, limited archaeological findings constrained his arguments to textual and morphological analysis. The dictionary, however, fully utilizes newly unearthed archaeological materials from the Fu Hao tomb at Yinxu and combines them with oracle bone character forms to provide a more comprehensive interpretation, confirming Mr. Xu’s early conclusions.
Due to these strengths, The Dictionary of Oracle Bone Characters quickly gained international acclaim upon publication and received unanimous high praise from the academic community.