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97-573: Nguyễn Hương Giang (born 29 December 1991) is a Vietnamese transgender queen, model, singer and actress. In March 2018, she won the Miss International Queen 2018 held in Pattaya, Thailand . Huong Giang was born in Hanoi on 29 December 1991. She had a tough childhood and used to struggle with dressing and talking like a girl as her community did not accept her. She is now one of

194-590: A 300-pages catechism in Latin and romanized-Vietnamese ( chữ Quốc Ngữ ) or the Vietnamese alphabet . The Vietnamese Fragmentation period ended in 1802 as Emperor Gia Long , who was aided by French mercenaries defeated the Tay Son kingdoms and reunited Vietnam. Through assimilation and brutal subjugation in the 1830s by Minh Mang , a large chunk of indigenous Cham had been assimilated into Vietnamese. By 1847,

291-775: A Chinese general who has established the Nanyue state in modern-day Southern China, annexed Âu Lạc, and began the Sino-Vietic interaction that lasted in a millennium. In 111 BC, the Han Empire conquered Nanyue, brought the Northern Vietnam region under Han rule. By the 7th century to 9th century AD, as the Tang Empire ruled over the region, historians such as Henri Maspero proposed that Vietnamese-speaking people became separated from other Vietic groups such as

388-558: A close genetic connection between Kinh Vietnamese and Thais although one 2017 study suggests they have dual origins from southern Han Chinese and Thai- Indonesians . Religion in Vietnam (2019) According to the 2019 census, the religious demographics of Vietnam are as follows: It is worth noting here that the data is highly skewed, as a large majority of Vietnamese may declare themselves atheist, yet practice forms of traditional folk religion or Mahayana Buddhism. Estimates for

485-526: A human skeleton). The targets and purposes of divination changed over time. During the reign of Wu Ding , diviners were likely to ask the powers or ancestors about things like the weather, success in battle, or building settlements. Offerings were promised if they would help with earthly affairs. Crack-making on jiazi (day 1) Zheng divined "In praying for harvest to the sun, (we) will cleave ten dappled cows, and pledge one hundred dappled cows." ( Heji 10116; Y530.2) Keightley explains that this divination

582-680: A leader named Đinh Bộ Lĩnh united them and established the Đại Việt (Great Việt) kingdom. With assistance of powerful Buddhist monks, Đinh Bộ Lĩnh chose Hoa Lư in the southern edge of the Red River Delta as the capital instead of Tang-era Đại La , adopted Chinese-style imperial titles, coinage, and ceremonies and tried to preserve the Chinese administrative framework. The independence of Đại Việt, according to Andrew Chittick, allows it "to develop its own distinctive political culture and ethnic consciousness." In 979, Emperor Đinh Tiên Hoàng

679-484: A long recorded history of the Vietnamese language and people, the identification and distinction of 'ethnic Vietnamese' or ethnic Kinh, as well as other ethnic groups in Vietnam, were only begun by colonial administration in the late 19th and early 20th century. Following colonial government's efforts of ethnic classificating, nationalism, especially ethnonationalism and eugenic social Darwinism were encouraged among

776-471: A particular ancestor was causing a king's toothache. The divination charges were often directed at ancestors, whom the ancient Chinese revered and worshiped, as well as natural powers and Dì ( 帝 ), the highest god in the Shang society. Anything of concern to the royal house of Shang served as possible topics for charges, from illness, birth and death, to weather, warfare, agriculture, tribute and so on. One of

873-435: A statelet within the Shang sphere of influence. These notations were generally made on the back of the shell's bridge (called bridge notations), the lower carapace, or the xiphiplastron (tail edge). Some shells may have been from locally raised tortoises, however. Scapula notations were near the socket or a lower edge. Some of these notations were not carved after being written with a brush, proving (along with other evidence)

970-575: A temple dedicated to the Duke of Zhou during the Tang dynasty , about 18 km (11 mi) west of Qijia. They mention the Duke of Zhou and other figures of the early Western Zhou. A handful of oracle bones have been found at other Western Zhou sites, including some from Beijing. After the founding of Zhou, the Shang practices of bronze casting, pyromancy, and writing continued. Oracle bones that were found in

1067-470: Is also thought to be related to their ease of use as large, flat surfaces that needed minimal preparation. There is also speculation that only female tortoise shells were used, as these are significantly less concave. Pits or hollows were then drilled or chiseled partway through the bone or shell in an orderly series. At least one such drill has been unearthed at Erligang, exactly matching the pits in size and shape. The shape of these pits evolved over time, and

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1164-432: Is an important indicator for dating the oracle bones within various sub-periods in the Shang dynasty. The shape and depth also helped determine the nature of the crack that would appear. The number of pits per bone or shell varied widely. Divinations were typically carried out for the Shang kings in the presence of a diviner. Very few oracle bones were used in divination by other members of the royal family or nobles close to

1261-574: Is applied to them as well. The bones or shells were first sourced and then prepared for use. Their sourcing is significant because some of them (especially many of the shells) are believed to have been presented as tribute to the Shang, which provides valuable information about diplomatic relations of the time. We know this because notations were often made on them recording their provenance (e.g., tribute of how many shells from where and on what date). For example, one notation records that " Què ( 雀 ) sent 250 (tortoise shells)", identifying this as, perhaps,

1358-481: Is considered one of the greatest monarchs in Vietnamese history. His reign is recognized for the extensive administrative, military, education, and fiscal reforms he instituted, and a cultural revolution that replaced the old traditional aristocracy with a generation of literati scholars, adopted Confucianism, and transformed a Đại Việt from a Southeast Asian style polity to a bureaucratic state, and flourished. Thánh Tông's forces, armed with gunpowder weapons, overwhelmed

1455-715: Is known as a "verification". A complete record of all the above elements is rare; most bones contain just the date, diviner and topic of divination, and many remained uninscribed after the divination. The uninscribed divination is thought to have been brush-written with ink or cinnabar on the oracle bones or accompanying documents, as a few of the oracle bones found still bear their brush-written divinations without carving, while some have been found partially carved. After use, shells and bones used ritually were buried in separate pits (some for shells only; others for scapulae only), in groups of up to hundreds or even thousands (one pit unearthed in 1936 contained over 17,000 pieces along with

1552-477: Is not known how Wang and Liu actually came across these specimens, but Wang is credited with being the first to recognize their significance. During the Boxer Rebellion , Wang reluctantly accepted a defense command, and killed himself in 1900 when allied troops entered Beijing. His son later sold the bones to Liu, who published the first book of rubbings of the oracle bone inscriptions in 1903. As news of

1649-582: Is now the Vietnamese language . Its speakers called themselves the "Kinh" people, meaning people of the "metropolitan" centered around the Red River Delta with Hanoi as its capital. Historic and modern chữ Nôm scripture classically uses the Han character '京', pronounced "Jīng" in Mandarin, and "Kinh" with Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation. Other variants of Proto-Viet-Muong were driven from the lowlands by

1746-479: Is thus also known as the Ruins of Yin, or Yinxu . Oracle bone inscriptions were published as they were discovered, in fascicles . Subsequently, many collections of inscriptions were also published. The following are the main collections. Observing that the citation of these different works was becoming unwieldy, historians Hu Houxuan and Guo Moruo began an effort to comprehensively publish all bones discovered by

1843-430: Is uncertain as some may be different versions of the same character. Specialists have agreed on the form, meanings, and sound of a little more than a quarter of the characters, roughly 1,200 with certainty, but several hundred more remain under discussion; these known characters comprise much of the core vocabulary of modern Chinese. They provide important information on the late Shang period, and scholars have reconstructed

1940-434: Is unique in being addressed to the sun, but typical in that 10 cattle are being offered, with 100 more to follow if the harvest is good. Later divinations were more likely to be perfunctory, optimistic, made by the king himself, addressed to his ancestors, on a regular cycle, and unlikely to ask the ancestors to do anything. Keightley suggests that this reflects a change in ideas about what the powers and ancestors could do, and

2037-747: The 2019 census , and are officially designated and recognized as the Kinh people ( người Kinh ) to distinguish them from the other minority groups residing in the country such as the Hmong , Cham , or Mường . The Vietnamese are one of the four main groups of Vietic speakers in Vietnam, the others being the Mường , Thổ , and Chứt people . They are related to the Gin people, a minority ethnic group in China. According to Churchman (2010), all endonyms and exonyms referring to

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2134-635: The Austronesian Chamic people . Around 400–200 BC, the Lạc came to contact with the Âu Việt (a splinter group of Tai people ) and the Sinitic people from the north. According to a late-third- or early-fourth-century AD Chinese chronicle, the leader of the Âu Việt, Thục Phán , conquered Văn Lang and deposed the last Hùng king . Having submissions of Lạc lords, Thục Phán proclaimed himself King An Dương of Âu Lạc kingdom. In 179 BC, Zhao Tuo ,

2231-601: The Japanese invasion of China in 1937. The Chinese still acknowledge the pioneering contribution of Menzies as "the foremost western scholar of Yin-Shang culture and oracle bone inscriptions" . His former residence in Anyang was declared a "Protected Treasure" in 2004, and the James Mellon Menzies Memorial Museum for Oracle Bone Studies was established. By the time of the establishment of

2328-535: The Khmer and Mlabri . Meanwhile, "mixed genetics" from the Đông Sơn culture 's Núi Nấp site show affinity with Dai people from China, Kra-Dai speakers from Thailand, and Austroasiatic speakers from Vietnam, including the Kinh. This indicates that although the Kinh people speak an Austroasiatic language that is indigenous to northern Vietnam, they are predominantly descended from Kra-Dai ethnic groups that migrated into

2425-512: The Kinh people ( Vietnamese : người Kinh , lit.   'Metropolitan people'), also recognized as the Viet people or the Viets , are a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to modern-day Northern Vietnam and Southern China who speak Vietnamese , the most widely spoken Austroasiatic language . Vietnamese Kinh people account for just 85.32% of the population of Vietnam in

2522-485: The Mường and Chứt due to heavier Chinese influences on the Vietnamese. Other argue that a Vietic migration from north central Vietnam to the Red River Delta in the seventh century replaced the original Tai-speaking inhabitants. In the mid-9th century, local rebels aided by Nanzhao tore the Tang Chinese rule to nearly collapse. The Tang reconquered the region in 866, causing half of the local rebels to flee into

2619-561: The Vietnamese language dated early 12th century, and surviving chữ Nôm script inscriptions dated early 13th century, showcasing enormous influences of Chinese culture among the early Vietnamese elites. The Mongol Yuan dynasty unsuccessfully invaded Đại Việt in the 1250s and 1280s, though they sacked Hanoi. The Ming dynasty of China conquered Đại Việt in 1406, brought the Vietnamese under Chinese rule for 20 years, before they were driven out by Vietnamese leader Lê Lợi . The fourth grandson of Lê Lợi, Emperor Lê Thánh Tông (r. 1460–1497),

2716-477: The Zhou dynasty , but the questions and prognostications were increasingly written with brushes and cinnabar ink, which degraded over time. Oracle bones bear the earliest known significant corpus of ancient Chinese writing , using an early form of Chinese characters . The inscriptions contain around 5,000 different characters, many of which are still being used today, though the total number of discrete characters

2813-533: The 1970s have been dated to the Zhou dynasty, with some dating to the Spring and Autumn period ; very few, however, were inscribed. It is thought that other methods of divination supplanted pyromancy, such as numerological divination using milfoil (yarrow) in connection with the hexagrams of the I Ching , leading to the decline of inscribed oracle bones. However, evidence for the continued use of plastromancy exists for

2910-441: The 19th century, villagers in the area who were digging in the fields discovered a number of bones, and used them as dragon bones , following the traditional Chinese medicine practice of grinding up Pleistocene fossils into tonics or poultices . The turtle shell fragments were prescribed for malaria, while the other animal bones were used in powdered form to treat knife wounds. In 1899, an antiques dealer from Shandong who

3007-727: The 7th and 4th centuries BC Yue/Việt referred to the State of Yue in the lower Yangtze basin and its people. From the 3rd century BC the term was used for the non-Chinese populations of south and southwest China and northern Vietnam, with particular ethnic groups called Minyue , Ouyue (Vietnamese: Âu Việt ), Luoyue (Vietnamese: Lạc Việt ), etc., collectively called the Baiyue (Bách Việt, Chinese : 百越 ; pinyin : Bǎiyuè ; Cantonese Yale : Baak Yuet ; Vietnamese : Bách Việt ; lit. 'Hundred Yue/Viet'; ). The term Baiyue/Bách Việt first appeared in

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3104-900: The Austroasiatic-speaking ancestors of the modern Kinh under one single ruler might have assumed for themselves a similar or identical social self-designation inherent in the modern Vietnamese first-person pronoun ta (us, we, I) to differentiate themselves with other groups. In the older colloquial usage, ta corresponded to "ours" as opposed to "theirs", and during colonial time they were " nước ta " (our country) and " tiếng ta " (our language) in contrast to " nước tây " (western countries) and " tiếng tây " (western languages). The term " Việt " (Yue) ( Chinese : 越 ; pinyin : Yuè ; Cantonese Yale : Yuht ; Wade–Giles : Yüeh ; Vietnamese : Việt ) in Early Middle Chinese

3201-516: The Hồng Bàng Clan ( Hồng Bàng thị truyện), written in the 15th century, the first Vietnamese were descended from the dragon lord Lạc Long Quân and the fairy Âu Cơ . They married and had one hundred eggs, from which hatched one hundred children. Their eldest son ruled as the Hùng king . The Hùng kings were claimed to be descended from the mythical figure Shen Nong . The earliest reference of

3298-732: The Institute of History and Philology by Fu Sinian at the Academia Sinica in 1928, the source of the oracle bones had been traced back to modern Xiaotun ( 小屯村 ) village at Anyang in Henan. Official archaeological excavations led by Li Ji , the father of Chinese archaeology, between 1928 and 1937 discovered 20,000 oracle bone pieces, which now form the bulk of the Academia Sinica's collection in Taiwan and constitute about 1/5 of

3395-423: The Kinh and were called Trại (寨 Mandarin: Zhài ), or "outpost" people," by the 13th century. These became the modern Mường people . According to Victor Lieberman, người Kinh ( Chữ Nôm : 𠊛京) may be a colonial-era term for Vietnamese speakers inserted anachronistically into translations of pre-colonial documents, but literature on 18th century ethnic formation is lacking. There is considerable debate regarding

3492-607: The Lê emperors barely sat on the throne while the Trịnh lords held power of the court. The Mạc controlled northeast Vietnam. The Nguyễn lords ruled the southern polity of Đàng Trong (inner realm). Thousands of ethnic Vietnamese migrated south, settled on the old Cham lands. European missionaries and traders from the sixteenth century brought new religion, ideas and crops to the Vietnamese (Annamese). By 1639, there were 82,500 Catholic converts throughout Vietnam. In 1651, Alexandre de Rhodes published

3589-790: The Red River Delta) in Chinese sources, indicating that a fairly stable population of Austroasiatic speakers, ancestral to modern Vietnamese, inhabited the delta during the Han - Tang periods. Others have proposed that northern Vietnam and southern China were never homogeneous in terms of ethnicity and languages but were populated by people who shared similar customs. These ancient tribes did not have any kind of defined ethnic boundary and could not be described as "Vietnamese" (Kinh) in any satisfactory sense. Attempts to identify ethnic groups in ancient Vietnam are problematic and often inaccurate. Another theory, based upon linguistic diversity, locates

3686-518: The Rénmín ( 人民 ) Park phase. Four inscribed bones have been found at Zhengzhou: three with numbers 310, 311, and 312 in the Hebu corpus, and one that has a single character ( ㄓ ), which also appears in late Shang inscriptions. HB 310, which contained two brief divinations, has been lost, but is recorded in a rubbing and two photographs. HB 311 and 312 each contain a pair of characters that are similar to

3783-721: The Shang culture sites. Ox scapulae and plastrons, both prepared for divination, were found at the Shang culture sites of Táixīcūn ( 台西村 ) in Hebei and Qiūwān ( 丘灣 ) in Jiangsu . One or more pitted scapulae were found at Lùsìcūn ( 鹿寺村 ) in Henan, while unpitted scapulae have been found at Erlitou in Henan, Cixian ( 磁縣 ) in Hebei, Níngchéng ( 寧城 ) in Liaoning, and Qijia ( 齊家 ) in Gansu . Plastrons do not become more numerous than scapulae until

3880-496: The Shang royal genealogy from the cycle of ancestral sacrifices recorded on oracle bones. When they were discovered at the end of the nineteenth century and deciphered in the early twentieth century, these records confirmed the existence of the Shang, whose historicity had been subject to scrutiny at the time by the Doubting Antiquity School . Oraculology is the discipline for the study of oracle bones and

3977-553: The Vietnamese state under Emperor Thiệu Trị , people that identified them as "người Việt Nam" accounted for nearly 80 percent of the country's population. This demographic model continues to persist through the French Indochina , Japanese occupation and modern day. Between 1862 and 1867, the southern third of the country became the French colony of Cochinchina . By 1884, the entire country had come under French rule, with

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4074-405: The Vietnamese such as Viet (related to ancient Chinese geographical imagination), Kinh (related to medieval administrative designation), or Keeu and Kæw (derived from Jiāo 交, ancient Chinese toponym for Northern Vietnam, Old Chinese *kraw ) by Kra-Dai speaking peoples, are related to political structures or have common origins in ancient Chinese geographical imagination. Most of the time,

4171-571: The Xia–Shang–Zhou project. Most scholars now agree that the Zhou conquest of the Shang took place close to 1046 or 1045 BCE, over a century later than the traditional date. Since divination was by heat or fire and most often on plastrons or scapulae, the terms pyromancy , plastromancy and scapulimancy are often used for this process. The oracle bones are mostly turtle plastrons , probably female and ox scapulae, although there are also examples of tortoise carapaces , ox rib bones,

4268-453: The Zhou ritual centre known as the Zhōuyuán. Some of these are believed to be contemporaneous with the reign of Di Xin , the last Shang king, and others to date from the early Western Zhou. The inscriptions are distinguished from those of Anyang in the way the bones and shells were prepared and used, the smallness of the characters, the presence of unique vocabulary, and the use of the phases of

4365-584: The area was the site of the last Shang dynasty capital. Decades of uncontrolled digs followed to fuel the antiques trade, and many of these pieces eventually entered collections in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan. The first Western collector was the American missionary Frank H. Chalfant (1862–1914). Chalfant also coined the term "oracle bone" in his 1906 book Early Chinese Writing , which

4462-608: The areas oracle bones were discovered and thus it is theorized they were presented to the region as tribute. Neolithic diviners in China had long been heating the bones of deer, sheep, pigs, and cattle for similar purposes; evidence for this in Liaoning has been found dating to the late fourth millennium BCE. However, over time, the use of ox bones increased, and use of tortoise shells does not appear until early Shang culture. The earliest tortoise shells found that had been prepared for divinatory use (i.e., with chiseled pits) date to

4559-478: The beginning of the subsequent Zhou dynasty . The earliest oracle bones (corresponding to the reigns of Wu Ding and Zu Geng) record dates using only the 60-day cycle of stems and branches , though sometimes the month was also given. Attempts to determine an absolute chronology focus on a number of lunar eclipses recorded in inscriptions by the Bīn group, who worked during the reign of Wu Ding, possibly extending into

4656-425: The book Lüshi Chunqiu compiled around 239 BC. By the 17th and 18th centuries AD, educated Vietnamese referred to themselves as người Việt 𠊛越 (Viet people) or người Nam 𠊛南 (southern people). Beginning in the 10th and 11th centuries, a strand of Viet-Muong (northern Vietic language) with influence from a hypothetic Chinese dialect in northern Vietnam, dubbed as Annamese Middle Chinese, started to become what

4753-415: The central and northern parts of Vietnam separated into the two protectorates of Annam and Tonkin . The three Vietnamese entities were formally integrated into the union of French Indochina in 1887. The French administration imposed significant political and cultural changes on Vietnamese society. A Western-style system of modern education introduced new humanist values into Vietnam. Despite having

4850-403: The cracking. A number of cracks were typically made in one session, sometimes on more than one bone, and these were typically numbered. The diviner in charge of the ceremony read the cracks to learn the answer to the divination. How exactly the cracks were interpreted is not known. The topic of divination was raised multiple times, and often in different ways, such as in the negative, or by changing

4947-401: The date being divined about. One oracle bone might be used for one session or for many, and one session could be recorded on a number of bones. The divined answer was sometimes then marked either "auspicious" or "inauspicious", and the king occasionally added a "prognostication", his reading on the nature of the omen. On very rare occasions, the actual outcome was later added to the bone in what

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5044-486: The earliest Shang stratum at Erligang (modern Zhengzhou ). By the end of the Erligang, the plastrons were numerous, and at Anyang, scapulae and plastrons were used in roughly equal numbers. Due to the use of these shells in addition to bones, early references to the oracle bone script often used the term "shell and bone script", but since tortoise shells are actually a bony material, the more concise term "oracle bones"

5141-460: The earliest oracle bone inscriptions to 1230 BCE. 26 oracle bones throughout Wu Ding's reign have been radiocarbon dated to 1254–1197 BCE (±10 years) with an estimated 80-90% probability of containing the true individual ages. Period V inscriptions often identify numbered ritual cycles, making it easier to estimate the reign lengths of the last two kings. The start of this period is dated 1100–1090 BCE by Keightley and 1101 BCE by

5238-557: The ethnic origin of the Kinh people. The Vietic languages are traditionally assumed to have been originated Northern Vietnam , around the Red River Delta. Archaeogenetics demonstrate that prior to the Dong Son period , the Red River Delta's inhabitants were predominantly Austroasiatic: genetic data from the Phùng Nguyên culture 's Mán Bạc burial site (dated 1,800 BC) have close proximity to modern Austroasiatic speakers such as

5335-730: The extent to which the living could influence them. While the use of bones in divination has been practiced almost globally, divination involving fire or heat has generally been found only in Asia and the Asian-derived North American cultures. The use of heat to crack scapulae (pyro-scapulimancy) originated in ancient China, the earliest evidence of which extends back to the 4th millennium BCE with archaeological finds from Liaoning, though these were not inscribed. The scapulae of cattle, sheep, pigs, and deer used in pyromancy have been found at neolithic archeological sites, and

5432-527: The first major presence of the Vietnamese in France and the Western world. When Vietnam gained its independence from France in 1954, a number of Vietnamese loyal to the colonial government also migrated to France. During the partition of Vietnam into North and South , a number of South Vietnamese students also arrived to study in France, along with individuals involved in commerce for trade with France, which

5529-442: The fortunes of members of the royal family, military endeavors, and similar topics. These questions were carved onto the bone or shell in oracle bone script using a sharp tool. Intense heat was then applied with a metal rod until the bone or shell cracked due to thermal expansion . The diviner would then interpret the pattern of cracks and write the prognostication upon the piece as well. Pyromancy with bones continued in China into

5626-445: The implementation of economic reforms such as the Đổi Mới policies in the late 20th century. Later, North Vietnam's Soviet-style social integrational and ethnic classification tried to build an image of diversity under the harmony of socialism, promoting the idea of the Vietnamese nation as a 'great single family' comprised by many different ethnic groups, and Vietnamese ethnic chauvinism was officially discouraged. Several studies show

5723-434: The inhabitants of Đại Việt "tattooed their foreheads, crossed feet, black teeth, bare feet and blacken clothing." The early 11th-century Cham inscription of Chiên Đàn, My Son , erected by king of Champa Harivarman IV (r. 1074–1080), mentions that he had offered Khmer (Kmīra/Kmir) and Viet (Yvan) prisoners as slaves to various local gods and temples of the citadel of Tralauṅ Svon. Successive Vietnamese royal families from

5820-548: The inscribed oracle bones were found at the Yinxu site in modern Anyang and date to the reigns of the last nine Shang kings. The diviners named on the bones have been assigned to five periods by Dong Zuobin : The kings were involved in divination in all periods, with divinations in later periods done personally by the king. The extant inscriptions are not evenly distributed across these periods, with 55% coming from period I and 31% from periods III and IV. A few oracle bones date to

5917-463: The king. By the latest periods, the Shang kings took over the role of diviner personally. During a divination session, the shell or bone was anointed with blood and, in an inscription section called the "preface", the date was recorded using the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches , along with the diviner's name. Next, the topic of divination (called the "charge") was posed, such as whether

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6014-420: The late Shang script. HB 312 was found in an upper layer of the Erligang culture. The others were found accidentally in river management earthworks, and so lack archaeological context. Pei Mingxiang argued that they predated the Anyang site. Takashima, referring to character forms and syntax, argues that they were contemporaneous with the reign of Wu Ding. A turtle plastron bearing several short inscriptions

6111-518: The long-term rival Champa in 1471, then launched an unsuccessful invasion against the Laotian and Lan Na kingdoms in the 1480s. With the death of Thánh Tông in 1497, the Đại Việt kingdom swiftly declined. Climate extremes, failing crops, regionalism and factionism tore the Vietnamese apart. From 1533 to 1790s, four powerful Vietnamese families – Mạc, Lê, Trịnh and Nguyễn – each ruled on their own domains. In northern Vietnam (Đàng Ngoài–outer realm),

6208-474: The mid-1950s. The result, the Jiaguwen Heji (1978–1982) was edited by Houxuan and Guo Moruo and, with its supplement (1999) edited by Peng Bangjiong, is the most comprehensive catalogue of the oracle bone fragments. The 20 volumes contain reproductions of over 55,000 fragments. A separate work published in 1999 contains transcriptions of the inscriptions into standard characters. The vast majority of

6305-484: The moon as a dating device. Four pieces (HB 1, 12, 13 and 15) have been particularly puzzling, because they refer to sacrifices in the temples of Shang ancestors, and also differ from the other bones in calligraphy and syntax. Scholars disagree on whether they were produced at Anyang or the Zhouyuan, and whether the diviners and scribes were Shang or Zhou. In 2003, around 600 inscribed bones were found at Zhougongmiao,

6402-428: The most common topics was whether performing rituals in a certain manner would be satisfactory. An intense heat source was then inserted in a pit until it cracked. Due to the shape of the pit, the front side of the bone cracked in a rough 卜 shape. The character 卜 ( bǔ or pǔ ; Old Chinese : *puk ; 'to divine') may be a pictogram of such a crack; the reading of the character may also be an onomatopoeia for

6499-512: The most probable homeland of the Vietic languages in modern-day Bolikhamsai Province and Khammouane Province in Laos as well as in parts of Nghệ An Province and Quảng Bình Province in Vietnam. In the 1930s, clusters of Vietic-speaking communities discovered in the hills of eastern Laos were believed to be the earliest inhabitants of that region. According to the Vietnamese legend The Tale of

6596-625: The most successful Vietnamese pop singers, having entered the list of most popular pop singers. She is best known as the first transgender singer to participate in the fourth season of Vietnam Idol , which contributed to her fame, similar to contestant Phuong Vy . She was the first transgender person to represent Vietnam and won at Miss International Queen in 2018. In 2014, she was a contestant on The Amazing Race Vietnam with her ex boyfriend, Criss Lai. Vietnamese people The Vietnamese people ( Vietnamese : người Việt , lit.   ' Việt people ' or ' Việt humans ' ) or

6693-609: The mountains, which historians believe that was the separation between the Mường and the Vietnamese took at the end of Tang rule in Vietnam. In 938, the Vietnamese leader Ngô Quyền who was a native of Thanh Hóa , led Viet forces defeated the Chinese Southern Han armada at Bạch Đằng River and proclaimed himself king, became the first Viet king of polity that now could be perceived as "Vietnamese". Ngô Quyền died in 944 and his kingdom collapsed into chaos and disturbances between twelve warlords and chiefs. In 968,

6790-487: The nation but also had far-reaching consequences for the Vietnamese people. The war, which lasted from 1955 to 1975, resulted in significant social, economic, and political upheavals, shaping the modern history of Vietnam and its people. Following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the post-war era brought economic hardships and strained social dynamics, prompting resilient efforts at reconstruction, reconciliation, and

6887-594: The new Vietnamese intelligentsia's discourse. Ethnic tensions sparked by Vietnamese ethnonationalism peaked during the late 1940s at the beginning phase of the First Indochina War (1946–1954), which resulted in violence between Khmer and Vietnamese in the Mekong Delta . The mid-20th century marked a pivotal turning point with the Vietnam War , a conflict that not only left an indelible impact on

6984-645: The new communist regime. Recognizing an international humanitarian crisis, many countries accepted Vietnamese refugees , primarily the United States, France, Australia and Canada. Meanwhile, under the new communist regime, tens of thousands of Vietnamese were sent to work or study in Eastern Bloc countries of Central and Eastern Europe as development aid to the Vietnamese government and for migrants to acquire skills that were to be brought home to help with development. Oracle bone Diviners would submit questions to deities regarding weather, crop planting,

7081-500: The oracle bone script. Shang-era oracle bones are thought to have been unearthed occasionally by local farmers since as early as the Sui and Tang dynasties, and perhaps starting as early as the Han dynasty . In Sui and Tang era Anyang , which was at one time the capital of the Shang dynasty, oracle bones were exhumed during burial ceremonies, though grave diggers did not realize what the bones were and generally reinterred them. During

7178-431: The oracle bones' discovery spread throughout China and among foreign collectors and scholars the market for the bones exploded, though many collectors sought to keep the location of the bones' source a secret. Although scholars tried to find their source, antique dealers falsely claimed that the bones came from Tangyin in Henan. In 1908, scholar Luo Zhenyu discovered the source of the bones near Anyang and realized that

7275-456: The practice appears to have become quite common by the end of the third millennium BCE. Scapulae were unearthed along with smaller numbers of pitless plastrons in the Nánguānwài ( 南關外 ) stage at Zhengzhou; scapulae as well as smaller numbers of plastrons with chiseled pits were also discovered in the lower and upper Erligang stages. Significant use of tortoise plastrons does not appear until

7372-547: The practice of riverine agriculture and in particular, the cultivation of wet rice. Some linguists (James Chamberlain, Joachim Schliesinger) have suggested that Vietic-speaking people migrated from the North Central Region of Vietnam to the Red River Delta , which had originally been inhabited by Tai speakers . However, Michael Churchman found no records of population shifts in Jiaozhi (centered around

7469-679: The proto-Vietnamese in Chinese annals was the Lạc (Chinese: Luo), Lạc Việt , or the Dongsonian, an ancient tribal confederacy of perhaps polyglot Austroasiatic and Kra-Dai speakers occupied the Red River Delta . The Lạc developed the metallurgical Đông Sơn culture and the Văn Lang chiefdom , ruled by the semi-mythical Hùng kings . To the south of the Dongsonians was the Sa Huỳnh culture of

7566-546: The regime largely fled to Vietnam. During French colonialism , Vietnam was regarded as the most important colony in Asia by the French colonial powers, and the Vietnamese had a higher social standing than other ethnic groups in French Indochina. As a result, educated Vietnamese were often trained to be placed in colonial government positions in the other Asian French colonies of Laos and Cambodia rather than locals of

7663-483: The region from southern China. One hypothesis suggests that the forerunners of the ethnic Kinh descended from a subset of Proto-Austroasiatic people who are believed to have originated around the modern borders of southern China, either around Yunnan , Lingnan , or the Yangtze River , as well as mainland Southeast Asia . These proto-Austroasiatics also diverged into Monic speakers, who settled further to

7760-481: The reign of Zu Geng. Assuming that the 60-day cycle continued uninterrupted into the securely dated period, scholars have sought to match the recorded dates with calculated dates of eclipses. There is general agreement on four of these, spanning dates from 1198 to 1180 BCE. A fifth is assigned by some scholars to 1201 BCE. From this data, the Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project , relying on

7857-454: The respective colonies. There was also a significant representation of Vietnamese students in France during this period, primarily consisting of members of the elite class. A large number of Vietnamese also migrated to France as workers, especially during World War I and World War II , when France recruited soldiers and locals of its colonies to help with war efforts in metropolitan France. The wave of migrants to France during World War I formed

7954-435: The scapulae of sheep, boars, horses, and deer, and other various animal bones. The skulls of deer, oxen, and humans have also been found with inscriptions on them, although these are very rare and appear to have been inscribed for record keeping or practice rather than for actual divination; in one case, inscribed deer antlers were reported, but Keightley reports that they are fake. Interestingly, tortoises are not native to

8051-528: The sixteenth century, groups of Vietnamese migrated to Cambodia and China for commerce and political purposes. Descendants of Vietnamese migrants in China form the Gin ethnic group in the country and primarily reside in and around Guangxi Province . Vietnamese form the largest ethnic minority group in Cambodia, at 5% of the population. Under the Khmer Rouge , they were heavily persecuted and survivors of

8148-686: The statement in the "Against Luxurious Ease" chapter of the Book of Documents that the reign of Wu Ding lasted 59 years, dated it from 1250 to 1192 BCE. American sinologist David Keightley argued that the "Against Luxurious Ease" chapter should not be treated as a historical text because it was composed much later, presents reign lengths as moral judgements, and gives other reign lengths that are contradicted by oracle bone evidence. Estimating an average reign length of 20 years based on dated Zhou reigns, Keightley proposed that Wu Ding's reign started around 1200  BCE or earlier. Ken-ichi Takashima dates

8245-447: The total discovered. The major archaeologically excavated pits of bones have been: When deciphered, the inscriptions on the oracle bones were revealed to be records of the divinations performed for or by the royal household. These, together with royal-sized tombs, proved beyond a doubt for the first time the existence of the Shang dynasty, which had recently been doubted, and the location of its last capital, Yin. Today, Xiaotun at Anyang

8342-465: The use of the writing brush in Shang times. Scapulae are assumed to have generally come from the Shang's own livestock, perhaps those used in ritual sacrifice, although there are records of cattle sent as tribute as well, including some recorded via marginal notations. The bones or shells were cleaned of meat and then prepared by sawing, scraping, smoothing, and even polishing to create flat surfaces. The predominance of scapulae, and later of plastrons,

8439-486: The west, and the Khmeric speakers, who migrated further south. The Munda of northeastern India were another subset of proto-Austroasiatics who likely diverged earlier than the aforementioned groups, given the linguistic distance in basic vocabulary of the languages. Most archaeologists, linguists, and other specialists, such as Sinologists and crop experts, believe that they arrived no later than 2000 BC, bringing with them

8536-546: The year 2010 published by the Pew–Templeton Global Religious Futures Project: Originally from northern Vietnam and southern China, the Vietnamese have expanded south and conquered much of the land belonging to the former Champa Kingdom and Khmer Empire over the centuries. They are the dominant ethnic group in most provinces of Vietnam, and constitute a small percentage of the population in neighbouring Cambodia . Beginning around

8633-619: The Đinh, Early Lê, Lý dynasties and ( Hoa )/Chinese ancestry Trần and Hồ dynasties ruled the kingdom peacefully from 968 to 1407. Emperor Lý Thái Tổ (r. 1009–1028) relocated the Vietnamese capital from Hoa Lư to Đại La , the center of the Red River Delta in 1010. They practiced elitist marriage alliances between clans and nobles in the country. Mahayana Buddhism became state religion, Vietnamese music instruments, dancing and religious worshipping were influenced by both Cham, Indian and Chinese styles, while Confucianism slowly gained attention and influence. The earliest surviving corpus and text in

8730-457: Was a principal economic partner with South Vietnam. Forced repatriation in 1970 and deaths during the Khmer Rouge era reduced the Vietnamese population in Cambodia from between 250,000 and 300,000 in 1969 to a reported 56,000 in 1984. The fall of Saigon and end of the Vietnam War prompted the start of the Vietnamese diaspora, which saw millions of Vietnamese fleeing the country from

8827-480: Was assassinated, and Queen Dương Vân Nga married with Dinh's general Lê Hoàn , appointed him as Emperor. Disturbances in Đại Việt attracted attention from the neighbouring Chinese Song dynasty and Champa Kingdom, but they were defeated by Lê Hoàn. A Khmer inscription dated 987 records the arrival of Vietnamese merchants (Yuon) in Angkor . Chinese writers Song Hao, Fan Chengda and Zhou Qufei all reported that

8924-460: Was first written using the logograph "戉" for an axe (a homophone), in oracle bone and bronze inscriptions of the late Shang dynasty ( c.  1200 BC), and later as "越". At that time it referred to a people or chieftain to the northwest of the Shang. In the early 8th century BC, a tribe on the middle Yangtze were called the Yangyue , a term later used for peoples further south. Between

9021-540: Was found at Daxinzhuang in Shandong on the floor of a semi-subterranean house dating from the Late Shang period. The style of characters is close to that used by particular diviner groups active at Anyang during the reign of Wu Ding, though it shows some variations. Nearly 300 inscribed oracle bones (HB 1–290) were found in 1977 in two pits dug into a building foundation at Qijia, Fufeng County , Shaanxi , part of

9118-567: Was searching for Chinese bronzes in the area acquired a number of oracle bones from locals, and later sold several to Wang Yirong , the chancellor of the Imperial Academy in Beijing. Wang was a knowledgeable collector of Chinese bronzes, and is believed to be the first person in modern times to recognize the oracle bones' markings as ancient Chinese writing similar to that on Zhou dynasty bronzes. A legendary tale relates that Wang

9215-457: Was sick with malaria, and his scholar friend Liu E was visiting him and helped examine his medicine. They discovered that, before being ground into powder, the bones bore strange glyphs which, having studied the ancient bronze inscriptions , they recognized as ancient writing. Xu Yahui states that, "[n]o one can know how many oracle bones, prior to 1899, were ground up by traditional Chinese pharmacies and disappeared into people's stomachs." It

9312-550: Was the first to come up with a method of dating them (in order to avoid being fooled by fakes). In 1917 he published the first scientific study of the bones, including 2,369 drawings and inscriptions and thousands of ink rubbings. Through the donation of local people and his own archaeological excavations, he acquired the largest private collection in the world, over 35,000 pieces. He insisted that his collection remain in China, though some were sent to Canada by colleagues who were worried that they would be either destroyed or stolen during

9409-405: Was then calqued into Chinese as jiǎgǔ 甲骨 in the 1930s. Only a small number of dealers and collectors knew the location of the source of the oracle bones until they were found by Canadian missionary James Mellon Menzies , the first person to scientifically excavate, study, and decipher them. He was the first to conclude that the bones were records of divination from the Shang dynasty, and

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