殷商彗星记事考

RECORDS OF COMETS IN SHANG DYNASTY ORACLE INSCRIPTIONS ON TORTOISE SHELLS OR BONES

甲骨文中的彗星记事,前人论述较少,至今尚无定论。本文主要从三个方面论证甲骨卜辞中确有彗星记事,为殷商天文学辉煌成就之一:1.总结几十年古文字学研究成果,考定甲骨卜辞中确有"彗"字,其形象扫帚之状,其义为扫除之意;2.查出卜辞多例,证明甲骨文"彗"字同日、月、诃、岳一样,被做为自然神受殷人隆重祭祀,从而考定"彗"在例中当释彗星;3.研究"彗"字四种不同字形同彗星实际形态的内涵,证明殷人对不同类型的彗星都做过认真观察,而且对彗头和彗星分裂现象也鄱有所认识。

This paper shows that there are indeed records of comets kept in oracle inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty on tortoise shells or animal bones, which may be looked upon as one of the splendid achievements in astronomy of the Shang Dynasty. Its main conclusions are as follows: 1. It has been affirmed by researches on ancient writing for several decades that the character 羽 in oracle inscriptions is no other than the character 彗 in today's regular script, and that it is shaped like a broom and means to remove or sweep away. 2. The eight kinds of records of comets in oracle inscriptions that have been collected prove that just like the sun, the moon, rivers and mountains as natural gods, the character 羽 was regarded as a star for worship, which is the comet in the shape of a broom. 3. A comparison between the four different forms of the character 羽 and the actual shapes of comets reveals that our ancestors in the Shang Dynasty already knew the differences in the length of comets, the cometary head and even cometary splitting.