THE SHANQ DYNASTY — MENZIES 551 



It is earnestly to be hoped that the An-yang site will be carefully 

 and scientifically excavated in accordance with the most approved 

 modern methods; for it is the only one thus far known which gives 

 us datable material for a study of the Shang Dynasty. To fail to 

 treat it with the same exactness and care that are being exercised, for 

 example, in the excavations at Ur or Kish in Mesopotamia, or in 

 those of Megiddo or Bethshean in Palestine, w^ould be one of the 

 greatest archeological losses possible, not only to China but to the 

 entire civilized world. 



In addition to the inscribed bones, there are certain other literary 

 sources for our interpretation of the culture of the Shang Dynasty. 

 These are to be found, in part, in the very few authentic sections of 

 the earlier part of the Shu Ching^ or " Book of History." The P'an 

 Keng P'ien and the " Day of Supplementary Sacrifice " are the prin- 

 cipal ones. These w^ere re-edited during the Confucian period, and 

 thus are not entirely in their original form. But the most important 

 literary sources that link up with the information yielded by the 

 inscribed bones are the traditions preserved in the ancient " Bamboo 

 Books " ; in the " Spring and Autumn Annals " of Lu Pu Wei ; in the 

 T'ien Wen P'ien of the Ch'u Elegies; and also in that fabulous 

 wonder-book, the Shan Hai Ching, or " Mountain and Sea Classic." 



In our study of the culture of the Shang Dynasty we must always 

 bear in mind that the entire literary history of the period was written 

 under the strict editorial censorship of scholars of the orthodox Con- 

 fucian school. Many statements in the ancient records not in har- 

 mony with their politico-ethical interpretation of life were deleted, as 

 spurious interpolations, and an imaginary Golden Age conforming 

 to their own conception of history was thus manufactured. It is this 

 medley of the true and the false which has created in the minds of 

 all serious students the feeling of the unreliability of early Chinese 

 history. But now that we have available in collections, both those 

 published and others as yet unpublished but accessible to investiga- 

 tors, more than 10,000 readable bone inscriptions, all antedating the 

 Chou dynasty, w^e have a reliable means of testing the literary and 

 folklore source material. 



THE LANGUAGE 



Let us now turn to the language as we find it in these documents, 

 which date in the main from the period between P'an Keng's removal 

 of his capital to the Waste of Yin in 1396 B. C. and a time not long 

 before the overthrow of the Shang Dynasty in 1122 B. C. Within 

 this period of 273 years the forms of the characters show some defi- 

 nite change or development; but we may say that on the whole they 

 remained pictographic throughout; that is, a horse was indicated by 

 the drawing of a horse, a stuck pig by that of a pig pierced a 



