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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 255.5.txt
Divined on Yihai: Do not call Wei to banquet. Used.384 381 I suggest to read yan 言, which is being used as a verb here, in its primary sense of “words” (n.) > “cause to have words > tell, state”. This usage occurs elsewhere in HYZ vocabu- lary (183.5, 474.6), although it is more commonly used is as a noun, as in the phrases wang yan 亡言 “not have words” (181.26-27) and you yan 有言 “have words” (234.1). This divination was made the day prior to weekly worship and sacrificial offerings to Ancestor Yi. The divination proposes not to include information about items brought back from the west when making announcements made during the ritual event. An alterative reading is to take 言as spelling the word 音, and then to take 音as a phonetic loan for the word xin 歆 “to feast”. In Shang bone and Western Zhou bronze script the same graph was used to write the words yan 言 “words” and yin 音 “sound”. Yin 音, in turn, was used as a phonetic loan to write the word xin 歆 “to feast” (Yu Xingwu 2009: 87-88; Jao Tsung-I 1959: 657). The most compelling evidence comes from a passage in the early Western Zhou bronze inscription called the Bo Ju ding 伯矩鼎 (JC 2456) which says: 伯矩作寶彞, 用音(歆)王出入使人 “Bo Ju makes this treasured vessel, to be used to feast the king‘s dispatches coming in and going out.” The last sentence is parallel with the more commonly used phrase 饗出入使人 “feast (the king’s) dispatches coming in and going out” (Xiao Sheng zun 小生尊, JC 6001; late Shang period) and “feast the king’s dispatches coming in and going out along with (my) many friends” (Wei ding 衛鼎, JC 2733). 382 來自西 “What has been brought back (or: what has come) from the west” is a nominalized verb phrase and the object of the verb 言. It seems related to the object phrase zi xi ji 自西祭 “sacrificial items from the west” (HYZ 4, 214, 355). 383 Kou you fa 口有伐 also occurs on 226 in a divination dated Wuwu, day 55/60. As stated in the commentary to that piece, I read kou 口as though it wrote the word yue 曰 “say”. HYZ 256 | 253