A Comparative Study of the Shanghai Museum Manuscript Bushu and Unearthed Oracle Bones and Plastrons

Abstract

The Shanghai Museum’s collection of Warring States bamboo slips contains a manuscript on pyromantic divination, which is named as Bushu. The hermeneutic of the text is complicated not only because it is a paleographic material, but due also to the esoteric, metaphoric terminology it contains. Previous scholarship has attempted to interpret the text in association with related textual sources, but its comparison with related material sources is still underdeveloped. The present article pioneered a comparative approach of juxtaposing the Bushu and the unearthed relics of Shang oracle bones-and-plastrons, which preserve the cracks produced as results of Shang divinatory activities. It is suggested that the comparison between the two kinds of materials is actually a comparison between early Chinese divinatory theories and practices. Though examinations of four groups of terminology in the Bushu against bone-and-plastron materials, the article sheds new light upon the hermeneutic problem of the terminology of “body metaphor” and others, and alerts us to the discrepancy between the Shang and Warring States arts of divination on some particular respects, which shall encourage further diachronic studies of mantic art in early China. 《上海博物馆藏战国竹书（九）》中的《卜书》是一批与龟卜有关的战国竹书资料。释读的困难，不仅仅在于其文字的古奥，更在于其晦涩的隐喻。既往的研究，多尝试结合后世龟卜类文献，然而此文本与相关实物资料之间的比较，目前尚未成熟。本文尝试比观《卜书》与商代出土甲骨，以考察古代占卜理论与实践。通过《卜书》中四组龟卜术语与甲骨材料的对照，本文试就有关身体隐喻及其他的占卜语汇作出新的诠释，并揭示商代与战国卜俗在部分层面上的差异，从而启示探研古代龟卜史的新方向。