Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/247

 Be a fence to the royal House. Live in amity with your brethren. Tranquillize and help the lower people.

"Follow the course of the Mean, and do not by aiming to be intelligent throw old statutes into confusion. Watch over what you see and hear, and do not for one-sided words deviate from the right rule. Then I, the One man, will praise you."

'The king says, "Oh! my little child, Hû, go, and do not idly throw away my charge."'

king has returned to his capital in triumph, having put down rebellion in the east, and specially extinguished the state or tribe of Yen. The third chapter of Book xiv contained a reference to an expedition against Yen. Critics are divided on the point of whether the expedition mentioned in this Book was the same as that, or another; and our sources of information are not sufficient to enable us to pronounce positively in the case. If we may credit what Mencius says, the Records of the Shû do not tell us a tithe of the wars carried on by the duke of Kâu to establish the new dynasty:—'He smote Yen, and after three years put its ruler to death. He drove Fei-lien to a corner by the sea, and slew him. The states which he extinguished amounted to fifty' (Mencius, III, ii, ch. 9).

However this point be settled, on the occasion when the announcement in this Book was delivered, a great assembly of princes and nobles—the old officers of Yin or Shang, and chiefs from many regions—was met together. They are all supposed to have been secretly, if not openly, in sympathy with the rebellion which has been trampled out, and to grudge to yield submission to the rule of Kâu. The king, by the duke of Kâu, reasons and expostulates with them. He insists on the leniency with which they had been treated in the past; and whereas they might be saying that Kâu's overthrow of the Yin dynasty was a usurpation, he shows that it was from the will of Heaven.