The Study Of Western Zhou Oracle-Bone Inscriptions

Western Zhou oracle-bone inscriptions were discovered at western Zhou site, and the ZhouYuan oracle-bone inscriptions comprise 96% of all Zhou inscriptions. Some inscriptions were discovered at Fangdui village of Hongzhao County, Shanxi, Zhangjiapo in Chang'an County, Shaanxi, BaiFu village of ChangPing County, Beijing, ZhengjiangYing and Liuli River in Fangshan, Beijing, South Xiaowang in XingTai, Hebei. Plenty of Western Zhou inscriptions were discovered in ZhouGong Temple from 2003 to 2004, these inscriptions is being tidied up and studied. It is valuable to study and accumulate these inscription materials.This paper is base upon the great deal of results that have been achieved in studying and resereching on Western Zhou inscriptions. We retided up these inscription materials, compiled papers and books on this topic, and made up an accumulation of the characters. In order to study the changes of these characters' shape, we analysed the component of every graph and compared them with the characters of Yinxu oracle-bone inscription and western Zhou bronze inscriptions. This paper usese the theory of lexics and sytactics as the guiding ideology, and analyse the glossary and the grammatical function simply.This paper includes five chapters. The first chapter is introduction. This part summarises the history of the research and study on the western Zhou oracle-bone inscription, introduces the peculiarities of the western Zhou oracle-bone and the aim and value of selecting this subject, the material of study, and the method. The second chapter is a new explanation of all western Zhou oracle-bone inscriptions. It is based on the achievement of former scholars, and mixed with my own opinion. The third chapter is a complication of the characters. We range 243 characters, count the numbers of the characters, analyses the form of the characters and the means of every words. The fourth chapter is the study of the characters of the western Zhou oracle-bones. The last chapter is the study of the glossary and grammar. We assort the substantive into nouns, verbs, abjectives, numerals and pronouns, analyse the grammatical functions briefly.