Oracle bone script: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:53, 1 September 2004

Revision as of 20:59, 1 September 2004

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'''Oracle Bonecone script''' (甲骨文 [[pinyin]]: Jia3gu3wen2) are incised characters found on ox scapula and tortoise plastrons ([[oracle bones]]) thought to be the earliest [[Chinese characters]].

Oracle bone script is seen to develop over the several generations of Shang kings, so there is no single defined form of for each character.

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Oracle bone characters may have components which differ in later characters, for instance the character for Autumn 秋 now appears with 禾 as one component and fire 火 as another component. From the Oracle script, one sees that an ant like creature is carved instead.

Of the thousands of characters found from all the bone fragments, the majority of them remains undeciphered. One good example is shown in fragment labled "Oracle Scriptscript for Spring". The top left character in this image has no modern Chinese character counterpart to date. One of the better known characters however is shown directly beneath it looking like an upright iscoceles triangle with a line cutting through the upper portion. This is the Oracle script character for 王 "wang2" or King.

==See slsoalso==

*[[Bronzeware script]]

*[[Seal Scriptscript]]