ODE 5. THE YIN WU.


CELEBRATING THE WAR OF WU-TING AGAINST KING-KHU, ITS SUCCESS,
AND THE GENERAL HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE OF HIS REIGN;--MADE,
PROBABLY, WHEN A SPECIAL AND PERMANENT TEMPLE WAS BUILT FOR HIM
AS THE 'HIGH AND HONOURED' KING OF SHANG.

The concluding lines indicate that the temple was made on the occasion
which I thus assign to it. After Wu-ting's death, his spirit-tablet
would be shrined in the ancestral temple, and he would have his share in
the seasonal sacrifices; but several reigns would elapse before there
was any necessity to make any other arrangement, so that his tablet
should not be removed, and his share in the sacrifices not be
discontinued. Hence the composition of the piece has been referred to
the time of Ti-yi, the last but one of the kings of Shang.

Rapid was the warlike energy of (our king of) Yin, And vigorously did he
attack King-Khu [3].

[1. We do not know anything of this time of decadence in the fortunes of
Shang between Hsieh and Thang.

2. A-hang is I Yin, who plays so remarkable a part in the Shu, IV, Books
iv, v, and vi.

3. King, or Khu, or King-Khu, as the two names are combined here, was a
large and powerful half-savage state, having its capital in the present