Sacred Books of the East/Volume 3/The Shu/Part 5/Book 1
PART V. THE BOOKS OF KÂU.
Book I. The Great Declaration.
Kâu is the dynastic designation under which king Wû and his descendants possessed the throne from B.C. 1122 to 256, a period of 867 years. They traced their lineage up to Khî, who was Minister of Agriculture under Shun. He was invested with the principality of Thâi, the present district of Fû-făng, department of Făng-hsiang, Shen-hsî. Long afterwards Than-fû, claiming to be one of his descendants, appears in B.C. 1326, founding the state of Kâu, near mount Khî, in the same department of Făng-hsiang. This Than-fû was the great-grandfather of king Wû. The family surname was Kî.
When the collection of the Shû was complete, it contained thirty-eight different documents of the Kâu dynasty, of which twenty-eight remain, twenty of them being of undisputed genuineness.
This first Book, 'the Great Declaration,' is one of the contested portions; and there is another form of it, that takes the place of this in some editions. It has appeared in the Introduction that the received text of the Shû was formed with care, and that everything of importance in the challenged Books is to be found in quotations from them, while the collection was complete, that have been gathered up by the industry of scholars.
King Wû, having at last taken the field against Kâu-hsin, the tyrant of Shang, made three speeches to his officers and men, setting forth the reasons for his enterprise, and urging them to exert themselves with him in the cause of humanity and Heaven. They are brought together, and constitute 'the Great Declaration.'
'In the first Part,' says a Chinese critic, 'king Wû addresses himself to the princes and nobles of inferior rank; in the second, to their hosts; and in the third, to his officers. The ruling idea in the first is the duty of the sovereign,—what he ought to be and to do; with this it begins and ends. There is not the same continuity of thought in the second, but the will and purpose of Heaven is the principal thing insisted on. The last Part shows the difference between the good sovereign and the bad, and touches on the consent that there is between Heaven and men. There is throughout an unsparing exhibition of the wickedness of Kâu-hsin.