A Study Of The Compilation Of Decorative Strokes In Definable Characters In Shang Dynasty

The studies on oracle bones conducted by scholars from earlier time period only concentrated on the paleography level, quite few of them really thought about the aspect of decorative strokes. In fact, the phenomenon that decorative strokes appeared in text configuration has long been proposed, yet seldom accomplishments were made for systematic sorting work. This thesis adequately sorts through those characters with decorative strokes out of1490definable oracle writings based on previous researches. The purpose of the study is to understand the pattern shifting of inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty, a conclusion is drawn that the aesthetics greatly influenced the evolvement of the word-formation.The main part of the thesis is about compilation of the definable oracle writings, it categorizes the strokes into4types--embellishing strokes, distinctive strokes, emphasizing strokes and ornamenting stokes, the classification is based on their origins. The literature data come from reference books like" The Compilation of Oracle Inscriptions on Bones and Tortoise Shells","Oracle Bones from the South of Xiaotun Village","Oracle Bones from Huadong", etc.1490characters that are likely to have decorative strokes are determined and compiled by eras and categories based on a standard of the classifications mentioned above.77characters with definite decorative strokes are sorted out and a statistical methodology is applied to calculate the probability. The compilation work concludes that the trend of normalization of text configuration has been existing the whole evolution of Chinese characters. During the development of oracle inscriptions in Shang Dynasty, more decorative strokes are discovered in the characters from Phase4or5than that from Phase1or2, which implies that an increasingly significant role was played by decorative strokes in the transformation of characters, and finally they are conserved as a part.Furthermore, this thesis explicates some ambiguous concepts about decorative strokes set up by early researchers, and it clearly brings about the definition of "decorative stroke". Moreover, this thesis comprehensively determines whether the definable characters have decoration and compiles the decorative strokes, it could be the era-based material for future study.