The original graphs cannot be made up, they must have something like them. The meaning of a graph is what it looks like and its implication, which belongs to the content word (which carry semantic content). With the need of grammar, when the meaning of a content word does not indicate the meaning of the sentence, but the relationship between other content words in the sentence, the content word becomes a function word or grammatical word. A Shang bone script for god’s will, god said and someone said is dipected as wei隹 ( “eagle”). The consensus amongst the cycle’s scholars is that the word wei 隹 (only, along) is often seen and used as a function word in ancient Chinese classic books. At first, a script was created to describle the represented object and its symbolic meanings. A word in the Oracle Bone Inscriptions is used as a content word in most of the cases, and also used as a function word in a few cases discovered by scholars. Thus the word wei隹(bird pictograph) in the Shang bone texts first should be a content word, is a pictogram of the bird, in which its meanings were expressed iconically as “bird say, angel say, tell angel, talk by the messenger between man and god”. And in the later period of the Oracle bone text the script was added kou 口(oral) to emphasis “say” and became as a new graph wei 唯. The function word wei 隹 (only, along) can be derived from its content meaning “god says”, and the content word wei 隹 (say, tell, allegedly) can be used to read the Oracle bone and the Bronze inscriptions and the classic books in their literal sense and logically, and to give an answer to some puzzling problems in the inscriptions. Through this discussion, we have used many examples of Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen, in which there are many undeciphered words. The purpose of this paper is to show how to decipher the Oracle bone scripts by using these undeciphered words. The key point is that the meaning of Oracle bone script comes from its shape, not its sound.
The oracle bone characters do not represent words of the language but thoughts or concepts. The bone text did not record an oral language. Perhaps we can say that it recorded an artificial language. The French scholar, Léon Vandermeersch says that the oracle bone inscriptions are a formula. A better analogy is to say that it is like a computer language. Is it English? The answer is yes, but it is not like English at all. Similar to Sumerian protocuneiform writing, the nature of Chinese writing is fundamentally ideographic, in which concepts or thoughts are represented rather than speech. This paper will present hundreds of examples of the oracle bone scripts that demonstrate these qualities. Excavated deer antlers Г-shaped axe and hoe and Г-shaped spear are figurative in the Oracle script jin 斤 (axe) and bing 兵 (weapon). A number of ideograms are derived from the Г-axe character. The ideograms of Sumer, Mo-so, English and Oracle script, are created from thoughts and by recording these thoughts, they are similar to narrative arts that express emotions. So an ideograph, which records ideas, not words or sounds, sometime also creates language. In addition, other kinds of small and light antler Г-shaped spear can be tied to the front end of a long slender and flexible pole, waved in a swinging motion instead of thrust. This weapon has a much longer killing distance than a spear for thrust. Bing-Г (兵) perhaps is the key technology of Shandong Longshan Culture from the Central Plains, and the predecessor of Ge-Г (戈).
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.
Micro-Blade (Stone knife) and its manufacturing techniques or flaking methods, considered by many scholars as the marker of modern humans, are used popularly back from 20 000 years ago Lower Old Stone Age until to 2 500 years ago Zhou Dynasty. Visible technological processes map invisible thinking patterns. The thinking model of Genesis, create a pioneering work, hurt your skin and bruise in Oracle Bone Script all are derived from Stone knife flaking process model. Comparing a common thing or process to a concept, especially abstract concepts, are a common means for the expression of thought in ancient, like a parable in the Bible and proverb in public. OB Script uses a scene of a common process, a parable or proverb to expressing ideas. An Oracle character does not have to record language, first is an ideograph used for alluding. The other sample of Dongba (Mo-so) pictographic glyphs is largely a mnemonic system, and cannot by itself represent the Naxi (Mo-so) language. Tab.2 is a sample of Mo-so Genesis can be read as a long story for hours and hours by the priest. A popular and most academic understanding of the Oracle characters as logograph or phonograph hinders the deciphering of many Oracle characters. The character刅 (Tab.3 CH1, now write as創. 倉 is add-on sound, 刀 is刂 idea) imitated to K” (transcription),「K」set as a Knife, 「”」as like debris from broken scars. K” suggests a third scene of flaking a stone knife from a stone core by percussion (Fig.1), this is Scene-parable telling 說象 . The scene of Blade flaking suggests skin hit or trauma 創傷肌膚 , enemy hitting or attacking 重創對手 , pioneering tool by hitting or innovation and creation創 造全新 工具或創造全新 工具或創造全新 工具或創造全新 工具或創造全新 工具或創造全新 工具或創造全新 工具或創造全新 工具或創(a knife is a pioneering tool when comparing to Chopping tool that perhaps in nature), analogy of an egg hatch by mom percussion can be stretched a genesis by god percussion創世紀 , this is sense reading解意 . The scene is rich in symbolisms above that are depicted the word meanings as much as possible; this can be called as Self Deriving. For English example, a scene of hive is depicted meanings of a school of bees, gather into a hive, a place full of people who are busy as bees, hive off [divide up family property and live apart], store (like bees). A scene of hand (of head, of bow, of moon, so on) may be another example. The character刀 (Tab.4) is imitated to K (transcription), pictograph of Micro-Blade (Stone knife, Fig.3). The character勿(Tab.4) is imitated to C: (transcription), 「C」as bow, 「:」as no string, 「C:」suggest a third scene of an unstringing bow. The scene of the archery removed bowstring suggests no-shoot arrow or hunting, no attack, 勿 use as No, Do not in OB Script.