中英雙語話歷史 第12期:商朝(文化和科學)

Culture： The tradition of ancestral worship has a long history in China. Archeologists have found it was practiced even in Prehistoric Times.

文化:祭天祀祖在中國有着悠久的歷史，在史前時期的考古中曾一再發現這類遺存。

With the emergence of farming, people worshipped the heaven in hope of favorable weather for crops. It was actually a kind of nature worship.

隨着農業的出現，人們爲祈求風調雨順的好年景而產生了對天的崇拜，這是自然崇拜中的一種。

Another kind of worship was ancestor worship, also called soul worship.

祖先崇拜又叫靈魂崇拜。

People offered sacrifice to their ancestors, praying for blessings bestowed by their ancestors.

人們祭祀祖先，爲的是求得先人的保佑。

From the Xia Dynasty onwards, the primitive religion changed greatly.

自夏代開始，原始宗教的內容發生很大變化。

Kings were endowed with supreme authority. In order to secure his power, the king combined ancestral worship and nature worship to create the God or the Heaven, and proclaimed himself the agent or the worldly descendent of the God.

由於帝王是世上最高的統治者，爲了維護他的統治，就把祖先崇拜與自然崇拜結合起來,創造了天或上帝這樣的至上神，並稱自己爲上天的使者或是其子孫。

Characters had existed in the Shang Dynasty, and discovered written materials are the remains of the late Shang, which mainly preserved on tortoise shells or shoulder blades of cattle. Nowadays, they are referred as oracle-bone inscriptions.

商代已有文字，現在已發現的文字資料都是商代後期的遺物，主要保存在龜甲和牛肩胛骨上的，今人稱之爲甲骨文。

Since mainly used to record the facts of divination, it is also called oracle inscription.

因多爲記錄占卜之事，亦稱卜辭。

A piece of it is about forty or fifty words, the longest a hundred words or also.

卜辭一篇約四五十字，最長的有百字左右。

Apart from this, some bronze vessels are also engraved with a few characters, called jin wen (writings on bronzes) or zhong ding wen (writings on bells and tripods).

在少量銅器上亦鑄有一些文字，稱爲金文，或鐘鼎文。

The longest writing consists of forty or fifty words, while the shortest one only five or six words, even one or two.

銅器銘文長的有四五十字，短的只有一二字或五六字。

Up till now, not many of such inscriptions have been found, but they are a primary source of historical materials for the research of the Shang period.

迄今爲止，發現的鐘鼎文數量並不多，但它們是研究商代的重要歷史資料。

Oracle-bone inscriptions are the important state archives.

甲骨卜辭是商朝的國家檔案。

The Shang rulers were very superstitious, and they would enquire ghosts and gods through divination when there was sacrifices, wars, hunting, diseases, agricultural affairs, weather conditions etc.

商統治者非常迷信，凡遇祭祀、征伐、田獵、疾 病、農業的豐歉、天氣的陰晴風雨等大事，都要用占卜的方法詢問鬼神。

Usually, a question was written on a tortoise shell or shoulder blade of cattle, then fired ； when cracks were produced, the oracle was interpreted on the basis of the pattern of them, and the interpretation was then written on the bone, too.

每次占卜時，先將所問事項刻在龜甲或牛肩胛骨上，然後把骨頭放在火上烤，直至有裂紋出 現，這時就可以根據裂紋的形狀進行占卜。占卜的結果亦刻在骨上。

After the predicted event occurred, the date of the occurrence was also written on the bone.

日後預言成真時，事件的發生日期也會被刻到龜骨上面。

One hundred thousand of pieces of oracle-bone in-scriptions have been found in the ruins of Yin, which contains about 4500 characters and about 2000 have been deciphered. The written characters were already formed in four different ways： pictographs, ideographs, associative compounds and phonetic compounds.

在殷墟發現的甲骨卜辭約有10萬多片，所記甲骨文單字總數約有4500左右，今已確認者約有2 000千字左右，基本上具備象形、指事、會意、形聲等造字方式。

Scientific Achievements: The development of production is closely related to the advance of scientific knowledge.

科學發展：生產的發展與科技進步密不可分。

The Shang people made great achievement in astronomy, calendar and mathematics.

商代人民在天文、曆法、數學等發麪均取得了巨大成就。

The oracle-bone inscriptions have records of solar and eclipse, some constellations and newly discovered stars, for example, the Shang astronomers discovered Mars and various comets.

甲骨文中有日蝕、月蝕、星座和新發現的星宿的記載。商代的天文學家已發現了火星及各種流星。

The Shang calendar had been quite perfect. It used a lunar calendar combined

with the solar year,disciplining month by moon, numbering year by sun and adjusting season with an intercalary month.

商代的歷法已相當完善，爲陰陽合曆,以太陰（月）紀月，以太陽紀年，用閏月調整季節。

The common year was 12 months, and the leap year 13 months.

平年12個月，閏年13個月。

The intercalary month was at first added at the end of the year, but later inserted in the middle.

最初年終置閏。商代後期，也在年中置閏。

Ten characters known as “heavenly stems” and twelve other known as “earthly branches” were used to name the days in a cycle of sixty days.

用干支紀日，十干，即“天干”和十二地支相配合，60日爲一個週期。

There is a complete list of stems and branches in the oracle bone inscriptions, which is the earliest one in the Chinese history.

在甲骨文中發現有完整的干支表，這是我國最早的干支記錄。

The advanced astronomy and calendar were closely connected to agriculture.

商代的天文學和曆法的進步，與農業生產的發展有密切關係。

Oracle-bone inscriptions show that numbers as large as 30000 with a decimal system were used ；ideas about odd and even numbers came into being ； the primary ability to calculate was also developed.

數學:商代甲骨文中有大至30000的數字，明確的十進制，奇數、偶數和倍數的概念，有了初步的計算能力。

Optics knowledge was applied to long ago. The convex mirror unearthed can reflect a man’s whole face in a quite small surface.

光學知識在很早就得到應用，出土的商代微凸面鏡，能在較小的鏡面上照出整個人面。