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On Jiayin,28 sacrifice (to) Ancestor Jia one white boar, offer one bowl of ar- omatic ale,29 (and) raise30 sacrificial items originating from the west.31 1 26 Shi 室is variously defined as a room, house, residence, and hall. It was likely a multifunction- al space that was used to dwell, handle affairs (as an “office”), eat, and perform ritual and sacrifi- cial events. Oracle bone inscriptions add directional modifiers such as 南室 “southern” (HJ 806), 中室 “central” (HJ 27884), and 東室 “eastern” (HJ 13556v); see Song Zhenhao 2010: 36-37. : I suspect this graph is a ligature that spells ji shen 疾身 “sick body”; Qiu Xigui ([1972] 2012: 1.11) cites HJ 13668r: 貞禦疾身于父乙 “Tested: Perform exorcism rite for the sick body to Father Yi.” Xin Jiaguwen bian 431 lists it as a variant form of han 寒 “cold” (see GuLin bubian, 755-757) ). If applied here, the divination would be translated, “If residing in the northern room, there will be no coldness (or: no one will be cold).” 28 As I understand it, Jiayin was the day of the sacrifice and not the day of the divination, alt- hough the two need not have been mutually exclusive. Divinations that start in the forms “date + sui 歲” and “date + yi 宜”, with sui/yi as predicate verbs, rarely included the word bu “divined” in between the date and the verb. See 132.1-3. Divinations in this complex form, that is with multiple independent clauses, are common, and it is important to note that modal qi 其never occurs, unlike as it does in front of the word yu 禦 “exorcise, defend”, in divinations about performing sacrifice. This implies that there was no subordination or dependency in the initial clause and that the clauses were equal. These types of divinations were proposing a ritual package. 29 You chang 鬯: The verb , composed of an altar classifier and right hand, only ever takes 鬯 as its object. The verb phrase you chang 又鬯 also occurs, but it does not occur in the same divina- tion formula that 鬯 usually occurs in, that is, in a ritual package with sacrifice, and often including prayer or announcements and a cereal offering; compare 392.1; see too 276.2,4, 354.3-4 and 149.10 for a clear distinction between the two. In a majority of the instances, I read 又鬯 either as verb + object “add (> have 有) aromatic ale” , or as conjunction + object “and aromatic ale”. Chang 鬯is usually quantified but never occurs with a measure word, whereas in divinations for the Shang kings, bronze inscriptions, and in received literature it is commonly measured with you 卣 “bucket” and sheng 升. It appears that 鬯 measured itself; Karlgren (GSR 719a) says “the graph is a drawing of a bowl”. 30 Parallel syntax (416) recommends that the graph 簋 “tureen” is an abbreviated writing of deng 登 “to raise” (Shen Pei 2006a). Other Shang scribal practices wrote 登with two hands underneath 簋 which depicts a “raising” (> offering) action. Chen Mengjia (rpt. 2004: 529) suggests that the offering of grain referred to taking newly harvested grain and first presenting it to the ancestors in the temple for them to try; Zhu Fenghan (2002: 89-94) agrees. 84 | HYZ 5