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辛未卜子其亦原 (往)田若用 一
壬申卜目喪火言曰其水(永/愆)允其水(永/愆) 一
壬申卜不允水(永/愆)子 (占)曰不其水(永/愆) 一
Divined on Xinwei: If our lord, also on highland, goes to hunt, (it) will be favorable. Used. 1
Divined on Renshen: Losing eye(sight). Huo’s words said, “It might per- petuate.” It really might perpetuate .158 1 158 Yao Xuan interprets mu 目in its primary sense of “eye” and suggests that a word like “brightness” 明 (=目明 “eyesight”) has been omitted after sang 喪 “lose/losing, cease to have”. Her transcription is 目喪囗<明>. She suggests “water” refers to a therapy to prevent the loss of eyesight; see Qianbian 2.4.3 and 4.12.7, and the comment of Takashima 2010: II.585. However, if it was indeed a therapy (ablutions), then it would have been a controllable action. Yet the negative used in divination (3) suggests it was uncontrollable. Sun Yabing (2014: 164, note 3) reads 水 as qian 愆 “mistake, fault, protract/perpetuate (said of illness)”. Evidence is adduced from a connec- tion between 水here and the graphically similar chuan 川 “river” in the following antithetical (yes/no) royal family group divination about illness: 丁亥卜：汝有疾，于今二月弗川 ║丁亥卜， 貞：汝有疾，其川 “Divined on Dinghai: Ru has illness. In the present second month (it) will not protract; Divined on Dinghai, tested: Ru has illness. It might protract” (HJ 22098 [Wu diviner group]). Variant forms of yong 永 “perpetual, perpetuate” and 衍 “overflow” were written with both 川 ( ) and 水 ( ) in Shang and Western Zhou script, and 衍is the ancestral form of and an attested phonetic loan for 愆. Huo is the name of a person (HJ 20245; White 449; Jao Tsung-I 1959: 25), and yan yue 言曰 introduces his direct speech; compare 351.5: 敖言曰翌其于舊官宜。允其。 用. In both instances a diviner is trying to determine the truth of a statement (likely the result of an earlier divination) by someone else. HYZ 60 | 133
Divined on Renshen: It will not really perpetuate. Our lord read the crack and said, “It will likely not perpetuate.” 1