Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/167

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BOOK III.
SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF THE WAR.
133

Book III.
The Successful Completion of the War.

I have divided this Book into three chapters:—one, consisting of brief historical notes of the commencement and close of 's expedition; a second, giving the address (or a part of it) delivered by Wû to his nobles and officers on occasion, we may suppose, of their recognition of him as king, and his confirming some of them in their old states or appointments, and giving new ones to others; the third again historical, and relating several incidents of the battle between Wû and Shâu, and going on to subsequent events and important governmental measures of the new dynasty.

Most Chinese critics hold that portions of the Book are lost, and that the paragraphs of it are, besides, erroneously arranged. In what division of the documents of the Shû it should be classified, it is not easy to say. It is more like a 'Canon' than anything else.

1. In the first month, the day Zăn-khăn immediately followed the end of the moon's waning. The next day was Kwei-kî, when the king, in the morning, marched from Kâu[1] to attack and punish Shang. In the fourth month, at the first appearance of the moon, the king came from Shang to Făng[2], when he hushed all the movements of war, and proceeded to cultivate the arts of peace. He sent back his horses to the south of mount Hwâ,


  1. Kâu is, probably, 's capital, called Hâo, about ten miles south of the present district city of Khang-an, and not quite so far from his father's capital of Făng. The river Făng ran between them.
  2. In Făng there was the ancestral temple of the lords of Kâu, and thither from the capital of Shang, now repaired for the purpose of sacrificing.