Skip to main content

Tyrant King Chou Hsin of the Shang (Yin) dynasty

King Chou Hsin is said to be a drunkard, he passed the whole night drinking. Sediments lay about in mounds, and there was a lake of wine, which filled three thousand persons sucking liquor like cattle, and Chou was swimming in Wine Lake, stopping neither by day nor by night.

There is another tradition that Chou had made a forest by hanging up meat, and caused naked males and females to play a cat and mouse game, chasing each other in this forest.

King Chou Hsin was famous for his for gigantic strength. His strength was such, that he could twist iron, and straighten out a hook, pull out a beam, and replace it by a pillar.

Like the tyrant king of Hsia Chieh, King Chou's debauchery arose from a passionate attachment to the woman who became his concubine, by name Ta Chi, the beautiful daughter of the Chief of Su. Ta Chi added horrible inhumanity to the extravagance and disgraceful revelry. She invented many most horrible tortures, the heartlessly breaking a men's shin bones to see which had the most marrow, the young or the old; the Heater for burning men, the Roaster for grilling them alive; the chopping of people to mince meat; the disemboweling the Prime Minister Pi Kan to examine his hearts, because she heard of saying 'the heart of a sage have seven apertures'; the cutting open pregnant woman's belly to satisfy her curiosity of finding out what happened therein.

The decisive battle between Wu Wang and Chou Hsin was the Battle of the Mu Plain. It was written in the strategical book of T'ai Kung that a young boy brought up in the camp, Tan Chiao had said: "The troops which are to destroy Yin have arrived in the plain of Mu. At dawn the soldiers carry lamps with fat, with which they are pounding their rice to make breakfast."

According to the "Completion of the War", the battle in the plain of Mu was so sanguinary, that the pestles (battle clubs) were swimming in the blood, and over a thousand Li the earth was red.

When Chou was defeated, he dressed in his royal robes, and burned himself on the "Deer Terrace" in his palace. Afterwards Wu Wang shot thrice arrows at the corpse, struck at it with his sword, and with his battle-axe severed the head from the body.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The wonderful pear-tree

Once upon a time a countryman came into the town on market-day, and brought a load of very special pears with him to sell. He set up his barrow in a good corner, and soon had a great crowd round him ; for everyone knew he always sold extra fine pears, though he did also ask an extra high price. Now, while he was crying up his fruit, a poor, old, ragged, hungry-looking priest stopped just in front of the barrow, and very humbly begged him to give him one of the pears. But the countryman, who was very mean and very nasty-tempered, wouldn't hear of giving him any, and as the priest didn't seem inclined to move on, he began calling him all the bad names he could think of. " Good sir," said the priest, " you have got hundreds of pears on your barrow. I only ask you for one. You would never even know you had lost one. Really, you needn't get angry." "Give him a pear that is going bad ; that will make him happy," said one of the crowd. "The o

The Legend of The Three-Life Stone

The Buddhist believe metempsychosis, or the migration of the souls of animated beings, people's relationships are predestined through three states of life: the past, present, and future life. Legend has it that there's a road called Yellow Spring Road, which leads to Fogotten River. Over the river there's a bridge called Helpless Bridge (Naihe Bridge), at one end of the bridge sits a crimson stone called Three-life Stone. When two people die, they take this route to reincarnation. if they carve their name on the Three-life Stone together while they pass the stone, they are to be predestined to be together in their future life. Although before their rebirth they will be given a MengPo Soup to drink and thereby their memory of past life are obliterated. In reality, San-Sheng Shi (三生石), or Three-Life Stone is located beside Flying Mountain near the West Lake, Hangzhou. On the stone, there is seal with three Chinese characters that say "The Three-life Stone," and a de

The Fox and The Tiger

ONE day a fox encountered a tiger. The tiger showed his fangs and waved his claws and wanted to eat him up. But the fox said: 'Good sir, you must not think that you alone are the king of beasts. Your courage is no match for mine. Let us go together and you keep behind me. If the humans are not afraid of me when they see me, then you may eat me up.' The tiger agreed and so the fox led him to a big high-way. As soon as the travellers saw the tiger in the distance they were seized with fear and ran away. Then the said: 'You see? I was walking in front; they saw me before they could See you.' Then the tiger put his tail between his legs and ran away. The tiger had seen that the humans were afraid of the fox but he had not realized that the fox had merely borrowed his own terrible appearance. [This story was translated by Ewald Osers from German, published by George Bell & Sons, in the book 'Chinese Folktales'.  Osers noted that this story was