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2. Historical precedents: many of the sets of temple oracles, and certainly the major ones (B-1, B-2), contain somewhere near the edge of the printed slips short sentences which are rather titles than complete sentences. W. Eberhard has done a preliminary examination of these and states that they refer to historical or legendary events from China's past often known to the general public through popular dramas. Although traditionally the majority of the rural people in China were illiterate, they would naturally know the stories referred to in the oracle slips from their own experience of stage performances in the village. Drama, and in modern times puppet theatre, have been effective ways to educate the people in the countryside, especially since these stories usually contain a moral lesson, and extol such national virtues as filial piety, righteousness, integrity, loyalty, patriotism, etc. By attaching a reference to a famous event of the past to the oracle, the ordinary uneducated worshipper would understand the basic meaning of the oracle: what happened long ago to hero so-and-so, also applies today to the problem at hand. Eberhard quotes eleven examples from set B-2 (the Kuan Ti oracles), from which I pick the following one:
“No. 10: Meng Chiao passes the examination at fifty”, thus very late in life. Meng was a friend of the scholar Han Yu (768-835)... The oracle indicates that success will not occur until very late..."22
The application from the story to the particular request made by the worshipper seems to be very clear: Whatever was asked for will not be immediately granted but the petitioner will succeed in the end. The worshipper is encouraged not to give up but to remain patient.
In a table at the end of his article, Eberhard lists for B-1 and B-2 the number of plays or stories that he has been able to identify, i.e., to find the corresponding drama and/or story in literature. Very likely some titles refer to local dramas and are thus not easy to identify. In B-1 (the 100 Kuan Ti oracles) 83 are identified, whereas for 10 oracles the titles are missing (I presume in the set available to him). What is interesting is that the titles of the two sets under study (B-1 and B-2) are not the same, and they are probably