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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 3.16.txt
Divined on Ren: Our lord will issue a command. for those names that occur in the three-shell set 441-349-205 (previously mentioned in footnote 21 Jao Tsung-I (2005: 21) reads wang 往as “to direct” (≈向), as in direct a prayer to the deity Dark Bird so that Er (he reads guo 馘as er 而) would not die. : I follow Jao Tsung-I (2005: 21) who reads this graph as a ligature that writes xuan niao 玄 鳥 “Dark Bird”. An alternative reading is that it is a phonograph with either xuan (from 玄) or zi/ci (from 絲) as the phonetic component. Dark Bird 玄鳥 was the anthropomorphic progenitor of the Shang people. The Shijing (Mao 303) poem “Dark Bird” 玄鳥says, 天命玄鳥降而生商， 宅殷土芒芒 “Heaven commanded Dark Bird to descend and engender Shang, to reside in Yin land vast and far-reaching”. Jao suggests the dark bird was a swallow (yanzi 燕子) and that the central area of its cult following was in southwest Shanxi (modern day Anyi, Shanxi 山西安邑). This localization accords with the numerous Huayuanzhuang East divination account which appear to record the prince just east of this area, in and around modern day Qinyang, Henan 河 23 Considering the fact that this divination was made on the same day as the one preceding it, it seems likely that 弗艱refers to 疾 “sickness”; Yao Xuan’s commentary to this inscription suggests to read it in the context of 446: 子弗艱目疾 “Our lord will not be afflicted (with) eye sickness”. 24 I read xiu Ding 休丁as though the preposition yu 于has been omitted; the phrase xiu yu Ding 休于丁occurs on 53.8; 409.29-31 and 181.1-2 are parallel divinations and these three shells originally formed a set. : Based on a comparison with the parallel phrase hu shi 呼食 “call to eat” on 35 and 286, the graph gui 簋 “tureen” here and on 14 and 16 should be read shi 食 (Shen Pei 2006a).HYZ scribes wrote the phrase 呼食as a ligature. Yu ji hu shi 于既呼食 “Upon finishing the call to eat” has a lexical converse yu zuo hu shi 于作呼食 “Upon starting the call to eat...” (16). HYZ 4 | 83