Viewing page 110 of 182

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

14.

consideraly enlarged by no means are the classes of queries of Shang Dynasty all included in them.  There is a shift of emphasis, a shift party due to the continuous change of custom and partly due to the fact that it has survived only in certain section of the general mass.  Hence sacrifice, which figured most prominently in the divination of the Shang Dynasty,disappeared altogether in the later lists.  However, we are not really concerned with the history of such change at present.  Let us return to the cult in the Shang period and continue our description of both the plastronmancy and the scapulimancy.

4.  Drilling and chiselling the cavities.

Hu Hsü in discussing plastronmancy gave a very good summary of the whole preliminary operation in the following term:

[[block quotation]]
"In the spring, the tortoises were collected and killed; the shells became thoroughly dry in the next spring.  Then they were smeared with blood and stored away.  When divination took place, the carapace was then cut off,  the plastron retained.  The scute [[strikethrough]] was [[/strikethrough]] over the hyo-and hypo-plastron ^[[was]] skinned off at the time of divination with an engraver..........."(Vol. IV, p. 1)
[[/block quotation]]

According to this account, which was no doubt true in later time, the final act of the whole cult include not only scorching but also the entire process of the mechanical trimming of the plastron.  It is doubtful whether this was originally not so in the Shang Dynasty inspite of the fact that there are in our collection both plastron and scapulae, which bear many unscorched cavities.  This indicates that scorching and drilling and chiselling of the cavities may not have taken place in one period.  Nevertheless, most of the bones with cavities which are all scorched. It may be that such exceptions as we noted are merely spurious specimens.  In majority of the cases, drilling and chiselling of the cavities as well as scorching were all effected at the time of divination.