Coocurrence of textual and non-textual usages of lineage signs in early Chinese bronzes: implications for the emergence of writing in China and beyond

Abstract

Abstract: Unlike China's earliest readable texts, the late Shāng 商 (13th-11th c. BCE) 'oracle bone inscrip­tions', preserved mostly on water turtle plastrons and bovine shoulder blades (jiǎgǔwén 甲骨文), which were largely forgotten until their rediscovery at the turn to the last century, bronze in­scriptions (jīnwén 金文), attested from the 12th century BCE onwards, seem to have been always known and were occasionally mentioned throughout the classical period. They were first system­atically cataloged during the Northern Sòng 宋 dynasty (960-1127). It was already during this ini­tial phase of scholar­ship already that several authors noticed that some of the most archaic bronze texts include graphs with a strongly "pictograph" character, often clearly distinct in posi­tion, size and ductus from the more linear and abstract graph shapes en­countered in the texts which they accompany. The famous Chinese paleographer and writer Guō Mòruò 郭沫若 (1892-1978) first called these graphs "lineage symbols" (zú huī 族徽) in a study published in 1930, where he argued that they represent quasi-totemic identity markers of ancient Shāng lineages and poli­ties and stressed their status as proto-writing. While Guō's theory continues to receive wide sup­port in Western and Chinese studies on the subject, there is no lack of controversies about whether they should be classified and analyzed as "glottographic" writ­ing sensu strictu or rather as "emblems", i.e. non-linguistic symbol systems, functioning somewhat like heraldic signs or "coats of arms" in various Europan traditions. Nor is there any clear consensus, whether they repr­esent names of individuals, kin-, lineage- or ex­ogamy-based groups, or even other social and political entities. Proceeding from the most recent catalog and study of these signs (Hé Jǐngchéng 2009), I will first introduce the extant corpus some 900 simplex graphs, summarize the recent Chinese and Japa­nese scholarship on their archaeological contexts, distributional patterns and possible relation­ship towards ...