The Concept Of Numbers In The Yin Shang Dynasty From The Perspective Of Sacrifice

The ideology of Yin Shang Dynasty was dominated by ‘gods’.‘Gods’ can be divided into three categories: the natural god,the sovereign god,and the supreme god.The Yin people believed that ‘God’ ruled the world,only the ‘king’ of the Yin Shang dynasty can listen to the commands of the ‘gods’ in the world.In the ceremony held by the ‘King’ himself,‘sacrifice’ is a very important part.These ceremonies have an important role to play.Through communication of ideas with gods,they can show the king’s own authority to the surrounding countries and at the same time maintain the social stability of the Yin Shang Dynasty.In the oracle inscriptions that record the sacrificial contents,we can know various digital concepts and ideas related to numbers of the Yin Shang Dynasty,during the sacrifice,the Yin people used various animals,Qiang people and slaves as sacrifices to gods.Among them,there is a wider range of animals.From the oracle inscriptions,we can see that ‘the six domestic animals’ were all prepared.In addition,there are many Qiang people who are sacrificed.When the king or the head of aristocrats are engraved in Oracle,they often record the number of sacrifices.By grasping the regularity of the number of sacrificial offerings and its relationship with the meaning of numbers,one can get a glimpse of the importance attached to the sacrificial ceremony by the Yin Shang dynasty and the deep and long-standing digital concept of the Yin Shang dynasty.The numbers used more frequently in the sacrificial offerings of the Shang Dynasty were ‘1’,‘2’,‘3’,‘ 4’,‘5’ and ‘10’.The reasons for the high frequency of use of these five figures are related to the meaning of numbers and how the Yin Shang dynasty treated the figures.But what needs attention is inscriptions.The oracles on the bones are not intended to record the history at that time,or to pass on the thoughts and cultures of the time to the next generation,but to listen to the inscriptions prepared by the gods.Therefore,it is impossible to know all the things of the Shang dynasty from the content recorded on the inscription.Because there is a large number of missing articles,there are many inconsistencies in interpreting or in deciding the content of Oracle.Therefore,this paper also analyzes the number usage of reference ancient book-‘ShangShu’.It can be known from the literature that the number often used in the ‘ShangShu’ is ‘1’,‘4’,‘5’ and ‘8’,of the figures with a specific meaning,the largest figure is ‘9’.This paper further explores whether the digital concept has changed when the figure is separated from with Gods.