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divination records of Wu Ding The Huayuanzhuang East divinations contain a five-shell set with a total of five div- inations in seven cracks on the problem of “our lord’s ear ringing” (Zi er ming 子耳 鳴).76 The number of shells or bones used to make divination about a single issue in Shang oracle bone divination reveals its degree of importance or urgency. In the Huayuanzhuang divination practice five shells was the highest count used to form one set, and this implies the prince’s tinnitus was one of the most serious is- sues that these diviners encountered. Oracle bone divination about ear problems was rare, but one well-known Wu Ding period divination account confirms that it was taken seriously and could warrant large-scale sacrificial measures.77 Dates in the prefaces to this set of Huayuanzhuang East divinations make it relatively clear that all five shells were in use at the same time and that the entire event spanned no shorter than what must have been an intense twelve-day period. Based on the formula by which scribes recorded prefaces in these divination accounts, the records can be divided into two subsets. One group records prefaces in a sixty-day count in the form ganzhi bu 干支卜 “Divined on day X/60”, and the other in a weekly ten-day count in the forms of gan bu 干卜 “Divined on day X/10” and gan bu zhen 干卜貞 “Divined on day X/10, tested”. 75 Yao Xuan (2006: 40-55) first proposed the theory that the main character was Zi Rong in Wu Ding’s divinations. The following sections provide additional support and endorse this interpretation. 76 HYZ 39.21↔53.25-26↔ 450.1↔275.5↔501; Heji 21384 is a “Huayuanzhuang East type” or- acle inscription found outside of Pit H3 and it can be synchronized into this set. Ban Gu’s Hanshu yiwenzhi lists a divination manual on sneezing and ear ringing called Various Predictions about Sneezing and Ear Ringing 嚏耳鳴雜占; see Li Ling 2013: 192. 77 Heji 22099 [Wu 午-diviner group] records an exorcism for ear ringing and the sacrifice of 158 sheep; see Yu Xingwu 2009:220. 38 | Part II: People Subset A: Divined on Renxu (day 59/60), at…Lord Pou: Our lord’s ear ringing means (or: is a sign that) there is blame, (but) there will be no (risk) reaching (the point of) affliction. 12 Divined on Guiyou (day 10/60): Our lord’s ear ringing means Gui-day child78 is doing harm. 1 Subset B: Divined on Ding: Our lord’s ear ringing is without harm. 1 Divined on Geng: Do not make rite to dispel our lord’s ear ringing, (for) there will be no minor affliction. 1 Divined on Gui, tested: Our lord’s ear ringing is without harm. 1 Divined on Gui, tested: Our lord’s ear ringing is without harm. 2 An interconnection undoubtedly exists between these divination accounts re- gardless of how the ones with partial dates in Subset B are positioned within the synchrony. No other records of tinnitus in this corpus make it certain that the divinations made over these five shells originally formed a set. Example (21) is from HYZ 275, which was part of another divination set (a three-shell set) about war with Shao discussed earlier and arranged in Table 2. (Day Xinwei 8/60 was two days earlier than Guiyou 10/60.) Example (24) is a type of divination that I call a “test divination”. When a divination utterance was preceded by the word zhen 貞 “test” it represented an advanced decision-making stage of the divination process and served to make a definitive test or final check of an antecedent. (24) seems to have tested divinations (20) and (21), neither of which produced a result when made earlier the same day and the day before. But as far as the records show neither did the two test-divination cracks. The following divinations made 78 The spirit Guizi is more commonly called Zi Gui 子癸. The appellation “Zi” means that this person died while still a juvenile. Gui, the last day of the ten-day week, was this ancestor’s tem- ple-day. Child Gui was the only juvenile spirit in the HYZ ancestral cult (twelve instance in total; four instances on HYZ 409 and four instances on HYZ 181). I propose that he was a deceased child of the main character. Wei Cide (2006: 79-80) comes to the same conclusion. Section 2.10. The hypothesis that the prince was Zi Rong 子戎 in the divination records of Wu Ding | 39 by Wu Ding’s diviners at a separate location, and on what appears to be the same matter, did in fact get a positive result. 。Heji 3187r Divined on Ding,79 Ke tested: Do not make an exorcism rite for Zi Rong’s [ear]80…The king read the crack and said, “Lucky. Rong will not have…” Tested: Make an ale libation to Mother Geng, (and he) will profit (> improve). 81 (Tested): To Ancestress Ji make an ale libation, (and) lord Rong will profit (> improve). This sequence of divinations comes from a nearly intact plastron (Heji 3187r=GuoBo 28; Figure 7). The divination account with the king’s prognostication was written along the left side of the shell in two columns of large calligraphy and colored in with cinnabar. Based on the smaller calligraphy on the right hand side of the shell, the account in large calligraphy was written for display purposes.82 The style of handwriting is what scholars refer to as “Bin 賓 [diviner] type I”, and this means that it was produced during the middle to early-late period of Wu Ding’s reign and likely at a location in the north of Xiaotun.83 The test divinations 79 I follow the transcriptions in Yinxu jiagu keci moshi zongji, p. 91 and Yinxu jiagu keci leizuan, p. 109, and not the transcription in Zhongguo Guojia bowuguan guancang wenwu yanjiu congshu Jiagu juan 2007: 145 (the same as Jiaguwen heji shiwen) which reads one missing graph in between Ding (day 4/10) and the verb bu 卜 “divined”. The color photograph in Zhongguo Guojia bowuguan guancang wenwu yanjiu congshu Jiagu juan (2007: 16) makes it clear that no graph was missing. 80 I agree with Liu Yuan (2007) who reads this graph as 耳 “ear”. The top of the graph is visible in Figure 7. 81 The graph transcribed here is written in oracle bone script. Liu Yuan (2007) tentatively reads it as the ancestral form of yin 螾 ‘earthworm’(?); he thinks it means to worsen. I follow the reading of Wang Yunzhi (2010: 555) as luo , which apparently was a type of reptile. (Traditional definitions say “dragon”.) This graph ought to be a simplified form of the more pictographic (Heji 35255 [Li-diviner type]) and (Western Zhou Geng Ying you 庚赢卣). In the Geng Ying you 庚赢卣 bronze inscription this graph plus “cowrie” writes the word ying 贏 “profit, win”; see definitions in Axel Schuessler 2007: 575. 82 See David Keightley 1978: 41, fig. 12; 46, n. 90. 83 Sakikawa Takashi (2011: 292) refers to this more specifically as (Bin) “Transition 2 type 過濾 2 類”. The orthographic type of handwriting referred to as “Bin” derives from the name Diviner Bin, who based on statistics was Wu Ding’s most prolific diviner. Oracle bone scholars refer to orthographies by diviner name because of the absence of named scribes. A “Bin type” inscription means the handwriting of a divination account either where Bin or another diviner in his “group 組” was the diviner. 40 | Part II: People were made by a known and trusted diviner of the king named Ke.84 Earlier I said that the king and his diviners would not have referred to one of the king’s chil- dren solely by the appellation “Zi”, and here is good evidence to support that in- terpretation. Diviner Ke calls the king’s son “master/prince Rong”, whereas the king calls him “Rong” without “Zi” in front of it. A further comparison between these two sets reveals a correspondence in both form and content. As is somewhat expected concerning an emergency about their master’s own person, the prince’s diviners appear to have been considerably more active and cautious than the king’s diviner. The king, on the other hand, and presumably once he learned what was happening, wanted to remedy the situation and to see instant improvement. The use of a specific divination coda by the king’s diviner conveys this quite directly.85 What we have here is another episode where divination was used to try and pre- dict the fortunes of others. Missing in the scenario presented earlier about Lady Hao passing on a divination judgment to her son was the king’s actual divination about it. Read against the five-shell set cited above, I propose that this was precisely the cir- cumstance that led to the divinations about Rong on Heji 3187. There are several starting points to make a connection between the two sets. The first is the correspondence between the names Zi Rong and Rong in the king’s divinations and the toponym Rong in the Huayuanzhuang East accounts. Rong was one of two toponyms in the Huayuanzhuang East divination accounts that occurred the most. Second, is how the dates in the preface are recorded in a ten-day count and not in a sixty-day one. The Huayuanzhuang East divinations regularly used both ten-day and sixty day counts, but the ten-day count was rare in Bin I scribal practice.86 Third, is the parallel language between the divination statements “弜(勿) (禳)子耳鳴” and “勿禦子 ”. The first two graphs were variants that wrote the same word (an adverbial negative), and the predicate verbs that followed them were synonymous. Both diviners posed their utterances in a negative mode, and this implies that neither desired to resort to exorcism. The prince’s diviners ap- pear to have not gotten an answer, but the king got the answer he wanted, and sub- sequently had his scribe display it in large, bold calligraphy. 84 This is the same diviner who made the divination about San Feng cited in footnotes 70 and 72. Diviner Ke was a diviner in the Diviner Bin 賓 group. (Serruys calls him “Gu”.) 85 The word ying 贏 does not occur in the Huayuanzhuang East divinations. These diviners did not use it in their divination practice. 86 For example, none of the examples of Bin I divinations collected in Huang Tianshu [1991] 2007 or Wang Yunzhi 2010: 166 include it. The mode of gradual abbreviation in the preface how- ever is an attested habit of the Bin-group scribes. The hypothesis that the prince was Zi Rong 子戎 in the divination records of Wu Ding | 41 Fig. 7: Wu Ding period “display inscription” of divination about Rong’s ear (illness); Heji 3187 [Bin I type]. The other two divinations by Ke on behalf of the king focused on which female ancestor to direct ale libations in order for the afflicted to recover. The first proposition was to direct it to the king’s Mother Geng 母庚, and the second proposition was to make it to the king’s Ancestress (Grandmother) Ji 妣己. Divinations about making ale libations to these same recipients occur in the Huayuanzhuang East divinations. Ale libation (guan 祼) was an integral part of daily worship events and the platform to make ritual announcements and reports (gao 告). Reports covered a variety of issues but most commonly concerned urgent matters like sickness and dreams, when exor- cism as a remedy had either been postponed or abandoned. When announcements like this were made in the Huayuanzhuang East divinations, it was usually by the prince to his Grandmother Geng (i.e., the king’s Mother Geng); and when exorcism was required, joint rites were performed to the prince’s Grandmother Geng together 42 | Part II: People with Geng’s mother-in-law, Ancestress Ji, who was the prince’s great grandmother (i.e., the king’s Grandmother Ji). A fourth starting point is that both Zi Rong in Wu Ding’s divinations and the Huayuanzhuang East prince were often sick and injured. In fact, amongst the royal children Zi Rong is perhaps best characterized by his illnesses.87 Illness and death comprised the majority of divinations made on behalf of or by the king about Zi Rong (10/19 instances). Two divinations (Heji 13874r) specifically in- quired into whether “Zi Rong will recover from this illness”, while most of the others were like Heji 3187, on whether exorcism was needed for him to heal. The only illness ever mentioned was to the ear. In addition to the king’s divinations for Zi Rong about directing exorcism rit- uals to Mother Geng and Ancestress Ji on Heji 3187, Father Yi, Ancestor Ding, Mother Bing, and Elder Brother Ding were surveyed as alternative recipients (or targets).88 Father Yi and Ancestor Ding, Wu Ding’s father and grandfather, were the Huayuanzhuang East prince’s grandfather and great grandfather. The corre- spondence of ancestor names across the two groups of divination accounts fur- ther lowers the odds in favor of Zi Rong in the king’s divinations and “Zi” in the Huayuanzhuang East divinations being the same person. The Huayuanzhuang East prince suffered from a variety of illnesses and in- juries to his head, ear, mouth, tooth, stomach, and shoulder. As I mentioned ear- lier, the simultaneous use of a set of five-shells to make divinations on a single topic implies that the issue was of maximum concern. Ear ringing and ear illness rarely occurred in Shang oracle bone divinations and two of the three people that had it were Zi Rong and the Huayuanzhuang East prince. Since both were one generation younger than Wu Ding, members of the royal family, and either one of his children or nephews, the odds that Zi Rong was the Huayuanzhuang East prince seems the lowest amongst the possible choices.89 87 Liu Yuan 2007. 88 Liu Yuan 2007. 89 Dong Zuobin (1933) once made the conceivable assertion that Zi Rong was a son of the direct line and the future king (K29) posthumously called Zu Jia 祖甲 “Ancestor Jia”. In the same vein, there is no reason not to at least entertain the possibility that Zi Rong could have been the future king (K28) posthumously called Zu Geng 祖庚 “Ancestor Geng” (Liu Yuan 2018: 96). Zu Geng and Zu Jia were two of Wu Ding’s sons. The prince and the place Rong | 43