Collation And Research Of Materials Related To The Bin-group Diviner Gu

There are a total of 400 pieces of oracle bones about Gu’s divination with 575 inscriptions,a few of which belong to(?)Bin Jian type and Bin Yi Type,the majority of which belong to Dian Bin type and Bin San type.Among them,oracle bones of Bin San type are better preserved.The use of bones of Dian Bin type is increased,we speculate that this is due to increased supply.According to the content of the matter to sort out the inscriptions,it is found that Gu’s main divination is about luck or disasters within the next ten days,followed by sacrificial rites,almost irrelevant to childbirth.Gu replaced Qiao at a latter stage as one of the main persons to predict if things will go well in the next ten days.October and November are the most common months in Gu’s divination,while August and September in Bin.In the trough of October and November,Bin was busy focusing on sacrificial rites and wars.We speculate that with the change of seasons and current events,the main concern of the diviners is fluid.For example,A is mainly in charge of the divination about the next ten days in these months,and when A’s divination focus is shifted,the old job was changed to be mainly B’s responsibility.In the choice of divination materials,Gu,Qiao,Zheng tend to use the left bone heads for sacrificialrites,and the right bone heads for wars,while Bin prefers to use the right ones in any situation.It’s quite possible that because the right side was considered more important that some diviners chose the right bone heads to divine the riskier war affairs.Due to the small amount of material related to the diviner Gu,his late activity period,and his main concern about the prediction of the next ten days,Gu and the other diviners that appear on the same piece of oracle bone is not closely connected in divination content.They cooperated rarely.The character "Gu[古]" is also found in the written-record inscriptions and other groups of inscriptions,as the place name,clan name and personal name.The name of the diviner Gu may be a family name within the royal capital.Finally,the paper discusses the relationship between the questions and the predictions,the questions are always concise and comprehensive,so there is a normal phenomenon that the prediction doesn’t seem to correspond to the question.