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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 5.1.txt
Divined on Yihai: Wait,33 (for) in that (it) will be favorable. 12 31 The prepositional phrase zi xi ji [登]自西祭is parallel to [登]自丁黍 “glutinous millet from His Highness” (48 and 416). This makes it clear that 祭is a noun and that the directional word 西 is where the sacrificial items originated. The reading of 祭as referring to “sacrificial items” broadly defined, is after Chen Jian 2004. An alternative reading is to take 祭as the ancestral form of ji 穄 “a kind of millet” (Panicum miliaceum, not glutinous). The reason is because in this corpus the direct object of deng 登, aside from 祭, is always a grain type, with the most common being shu 黍 “glutinous millet”. The Mu Tianzi zhuan 穆天子傳, Chapter 2, has the following passage: “On Xinsi (day 18), we entered into the Caonu people’s games, and they feasted the Son of Heaven on the bank of the Yang River (洋水), and then contributed 900 feed horses (shi ma 食馬), 7000 cattle and sheep, and 100 cartloads of grain (ji mi 穄米).” Wei Cide (2006: 154-155) makes the connection between divinations in this formula with a grain-offering rite (zi 粢) recorded in Pre-Qin received literature. 32 Zhang Shichao (2008a) determines that the word yan 延is related to the offering list, be- cause the items offered to Ancestor Jia on his fixed day of worship in divination account (1) are the same as those offered to Ancestor Yi a day later. That no ancestor ever was ever recorded “continuing 延” on Ancestor Jia’s day presumably had to do both with the fact that his cult day was the first day of the week, and that he was the most senior amongst his brothers. In Zhang’s interpretation this notation means that what was offered for one ancestor was continued exact- ly the same way for another later in and during the same week. Based mainly on 363.3, Sun Yabing (2014: 115-16) suggests reading these sentences as notations about what actually took place . Either way, this sentence does not seem to be the focus of the divination. Rather it ap- pears to be documenting ritual procedures. I see a comparison in this HYZ divination formula with Tunnan 738: 陽甲事其延般庚、小辛，王受又(佑)。吉。║弜(勿)延 “If Yang Jia’s service (=what we did and offered him) is continued (for) Pan Geng (and) Xiao Xin, His Majesty will receive blessings. Auspicious. ║ Do not continue (it).” See too 311 and 237.11: 歲延祖乙 “Sacri- fices will continue (for) Ancestor Yi”. HYZ 5 | 85