並列摘要
Shang King Wu-ting's campaign against the State of Ba 巴 has long been a frequently discussed and quoted event among scholars of ancient Chinese and Ba Shu 巴蜀 culture studies. So far, however, the reading of the word Ba and the geographic location of the State during the Shang Dynasty are still controversial among these scholars. In this essay, the author reconstructed from the inscriptions on the fragments of Shang oracle bones and tortoise shells the details of King Wu-ting's campaign including the King's decision making process, deployment of military resources to the final engagement with the enemy. And from the peoples and places involved in the campaign, the author elucidated the geographic location of ancient Ba State as near the northeastern side of present Hubei Province, where important Ba culture remains had been unearthed by modern archaeologists. The author also compared the forms of Shang inscriptions ba 巴 and zhu 祝, and concluded that the origin meaning of the word ba was the pictograph of a kneeling man's hand or palm, and that the pictograph ba the archaic form of the word ba3 把. When it was used as the name of the State during the Shang Dynasty, it was a sound loan word.