The words for the moon phase in the inscriptions on bronze wares in the Zhou dynasty are open to different interpretations, and the calculation of the moon phase dates clarifies the ambiguities of the bronze moon phase words. Calculation of the time interval between the calendar solunar dates in two bronze ware inscriptions can be made, because the calendar solunar dates (gan-zhi 干支) were in a constant cycle of 60 days. Calculation of the date interval between the two moon phases on the same two bronze ware inscriptions also can be made , because the moon phase is also in cycles. The narrative tradition in the inscriptions of the Shang and Zhou dynasties includes a date series: the day in the solunar cycle, the month and the year of a king’s reign, and the day in the moon phase cycle. By comparing whether the two intervals meet or not, one can verify whether the bronze moon-phase idioms are meaningful, and it can also be confirmed whether the chronology of the kings of Zhou compiled by the previous scholars is resonable and create a new chronology through iterative calculation. The time intervals calculated in this paper chronicle every imperial event from the Zhou dynasty to the Shang dynasty, which rebuild a new chronology for the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties. All modern attempts are hindered by a basic assumption, that the bone calendar of the Shang Dynasty is the same as the bronze calendar of the Zhou Dynasty, but it is completely different from the bronze calendar of Zhou, when reading the Bronze Annals (this paper) alongside the Bone Annals (last paper) and as seen in Table 24. In addition, although the inscriptions related to the lunar phases are extremely difficult to understand, through computation, the records of three lunar eclipses on bronze vessels in the Zhou and Shang dynasties are newly recognized, which helps to reconstruct a new chronological list of the kings of Zhou.

This article explores the socioreligious background of the Shang dynasty oracle bone inscriptions from an unconventional perspective by analyzing the use of oracular language in epigraphic texts found on slightly later ritual bronze vessels. While this phenomenon has so far received little scholarly attention, the author argues that the cross-contextual occurrence of oracular terminology indicates a relationship between the two types of epigraphic texts and the social discourses from which they were created. Drawing on parallel passages in other bronze inscriptions, the author examines the precise meanings of the two most common oracular phrases and proposes that they belonged to a technical terminology that shared fundamental conceptual characteristics with later legal jargon. Addressing the communicative intention behind their use, the author points out that oracular language is generally placed in prominent positions in bronze inscriptions and appears in various highly ritualized and ceremonial interactions between humans and the ancestral spirits. Based on these observations, the author concludes that the bronze inscriptions support the view that the Shang dynasty oracle bone inscriptions were written for administrative and specialized purposes and were embedded in a much wider network of communication practices between humans and supra-human powers.

The people of Shang Dynasty were superstitious, advocating ghosts and gods. They liked divination to ask the gods for anything, and used this to judge the good and bad. Therefore, ‘disaster’ and ‘auspicious’ are two very important aspects of divination. For the words about disaster in oracle-bone inscriptions, the predecessors have done more systematic studies. However, there is relatively little systematic research on words related to ‘auspicious’. So this paper focuses mainly on the words that few scholars have discussed before, and compares their glyphs, meanings, modified things and grammatical aspects between oracle-bone inscriptions and bronze ones. After the systematic comparison and analysis, it draws the following conclusions. First, in terms of the glyphs and meanings, the components and combinations of the words in the oracle-bone inscriptions are mostly stable, but the meaning extension method is simple and very imperfect. Second, in terms of the types of things modified, and in comparison with the category of the bronze inscriptions, that of the oracle-bone ones is more and more detailed, and at the same time, the focus of the oracle-bone ones is different from the ‘person’ to which the bronze ones pay attention as the focus of them is on the ‘event itself’. Last, in terms of grammatical functions, the words are more independent in the oracle-bone inscriptions than in the bronze ones, having the usage of single-word sentences. But they cannot be used as attributives, and the stability of grammatical functions is not as good as that in the bronze ones. Through the analyses and conclusions above, this paper shows the synchronic distribution, the diachronic development, and the characteristics of the words in the oracle-bone inscriptions in a comprehensive way. It also demonstrates the ideology and culture of Shang Dynasty and Zhou Dynasty, which can be summed up as ‘from the theocracy-centered to the ruled-by-men’.

The intent of this paper is to introduce a method of deciphering oracle bone characters; specifically the interpretation of the Compound Ideograph. Utilizing this method, the article applies known characters to hypothesizing the expression of unknown characters. This view of Chinese characters comes from such work as I Ching or Classic of Changes and Shi-poem or Classic of Poetry, where the figurative mean and depiction of a realistic scene or parable are captured and symbolized within a pictorial representation or ideograph. By returning pictographic combinations to the realistic scene, all the meanings of an ideograph are derived from the scene and scene’s parable. The following explains the correlation between the combinations with the intended meaning. The ideographs are shown in that the first part is the pronunciation sound in Chinese while the second part in italics is the scene combined pictographs. [1] The English character of Bow for shooting arrows is borrowed figuratively to express “to bend the knee or body, as in reverence, submission”, “to cause to bend; make curved”, and is extended to Bowl to denote the Container figure like a bow. [2] The character of Sol means the sun, and its scene maps a lonely man like the sun without partners around, so Sol is used to denote solitary (alone, lone), sole (single), etc. in its figurative sense. [3] The Chinese character Gou-ear (句) is a scene of the ear with an ear-hook. Gou-ear means the hook in ear’s figurative sense, for a man uses his ear as a hook, or an ear looks like a hook on the wall. In another perspective, Gou-ear depicts Be-hooked, meaning Arrest, Capture, or Chain-up. When an ancient encounters a hook or a man stooping to work, and tries to tell others about it, he may say a tool like the ear (projecting out of the head) or a man working like the ear (figure), which is similar to saying that it looks like a bow in the West. [4] A character Fu-man:tiger (赴) is made of a tiger and man, reading ‘the tiger is like a man standing up’. A scene-parable of the tiger standing suggests “pounce, jump”, extending its meaning to “go to like a tiger jump, dedicate on”. It is a man determinative ideograph: the tiger is determined by a man standing. ‘Man is read as his feature: standing’ is called semantic loan. Similarly, Yue-man:deer (跃), means a deer like a man standing, also meaning a leap. Xiong-man:pig (熊) means a bear; a pig standing is like the bear. [5] A character Lian-ear:mouth (聯) is a narrative scene of the mouth-ear-mouth, words to words through the ear, telling a narrative story of people that are connected in the ear in the wild restricted visibility, which is derived to the connection, union, and contact. [6] Dong-kid (動) means a move, a scene of a boy (semantic loan), for a child’s behavior is the non- stop action for a moment. [7] A character Yu-pup:gape (欲) is a scene of the mouth opened up, which maps ‘want’. Man’s want means wish, man’s want from heart or by nature is hard to draw and ancient Chinese oracle priest to draw ‘animal’s want’, which was used metaphorically to mean the very wish, appetite, and desire (sex, material). Overall, an ideo-character is a narrative picture or story which tells thoughts or ideas, not record language words, and then is pronounced the glyph in it later. Thus the character creates the word.

The Assisted evidence of Shuo Wen Jie Zi（《說文解字翼徵》）was written by Piao Xuan Shou who is a famous scholar in Joseon Dynasty. This is South Korea's only remaining book that The author was first use of Chinese bronze inscriptions, Seal characters and drum-stone inscriptions to research Shuo Wen（《說文》）. By this way, The author want to correct the mistake of Shuo Wen. So it is stand for that the philology researching reached new heights. However, there are still quite a few defects and shortcomings in the book, like follow blindly view of Xu Shen and wrong to knew Chinese bronze inscriptions. For the Chinese scholars, this book have some effects like “Stones from other hills may serve to polish the jade of this one”. As an example with 12 characters from Bronze inscriptions of Yu Tripod （《大盂鼎銘文》） that it had quoted in this book, and the current Academic research Can be checked with the view of correction Shuo Wen. So that this book can be evaluated and inherited.

According to the inscriptions on Bronze wares in West Zhou Dynasty, we know the history. Some bronze wares are only inscribed on clan names, names of makers or ancestors titles and so on. But some of the bronze wares reflect the cause of wars, the content of crusade and the ceremonial activities. Many things are inscribed on the bronze wares for recording, so names related weapons on inscriptions are plentiful. This paper focusing on weapons like Dun (盾), gan (干), jia (甲), zhou (胄) and so on recorded in inscriptions discusses their names and functions. According to the shape and reorganization and textual criticisms and explanations to grapheme, we classified the weapons and textually research their meanings with the help of new research achievements and the reference of literature and unearthed material.