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Root / 中國漢文 / clean / 商殷朝 / 花園庄（洹北） / 花园庄东地甲骨 / 英譯文 / HYZ 161.1.txt
On Xinwei, sacrifice (to) Ancestor Yi one black bull, offer one bowl of aro- matic ale (and) our lord will pray, saying, “Near Ancestor! (I) am not say- ing (I) Cloud Buffalo rectify (my) Ancestor. (I) am saying, (in) the evening be calm! Disturb (me) no more!” 279 1 279 For an annotated reading and discussion of this divination account, see Schwartz 2013. In that paper I proposed to read yun si 云兕 as the personal name of the protagonist, Zi “our lord”, and confirmed yu zu 毓祖 “Near Ancestor” and zu 祖 “Ancestor” both referred to his grandfa- ther, Ancestor Yi 祖乙. I noted rao meant “drunk and unruly”, and explained that the prayer- maker was imploring the ancestral spirit not to disturb the living. While I still think this read- ing is reasonable, it is worth it here to explore an alternative interpretation, namely that 云兕 was a type of sacrificial animal, and the prayer was being spoken to two recipients, Ancestor Yi (called here “Near Ancestor”) and Ancestor Jia (called here only “Ancestor”). Shang oracle bone inscriptions record a place called Yun 云 “Cloud”, and “Yun’s buffalo” would then corre- spond with “black bull” mentioned earlier. Ancestor Yi undoubtedly corresponded to the “Near Ancestor” in the prayer (the prince’s grandfather). In my 2013 paper I parsed the prayer text as, 子祝曰毓且(祖)，非曰云兕正且(祖)。隹(唯)曰彔侐不有擾.Ancestor Yi and Ancestor Jia are referred to in other Huayuanzhuang East divination records as the “Two Ancestors” (er zu 二 祖; see 162 immediately below, HYZ 7 and 411), and they were often sacrificed to jointly. As such, the sacrifice, offerings, and prayer could be referring to a prayer directed at both ances- tors. “Ancestor” could be referring to Ancestor Jia. The plea for this ancestor to remain calm HYZ 163 + 506 | 189