I. Sources
Ouyang Xiu, a litterateur in the Song Dynasty, wrote a preface to Biography of Lingguan.
Second, the original text (excerpt)
I hate these three. With your three arrows, you will never forget your father's ambition! "Zhuang zong is hiding in the temple. Later, when fighting, he sent someone to tell the temple with a small supervisor, asking for his arrow, filling his move, passively exploring, and returning home in triumph.
Three. Translation (excerpt)
These three things are my legacy. Here are three arrows for you. I hope you don't forget your father's desire for revenge. "Zhuang Zong hid the arrow in the ancestral temple. After the war, he sent officials to sacrifice young prisoners to the ancestral temple as gifts. He respectfully took out the arrow, put it in a woven bag and carried it on his back to kill the former. After winning the battle, he put the arrow back to the ancestral temple.
Creation background
After Ouyang Xiu entered politics, the Northern Song Dynasty began to rise and fall. Various social contradictions have become increasingly acute, some political abuses have become more and more serious, and social crises have become more and more disturbing. In the early years of Injong, people's riots led by Wang Lun and Li Hai followed. Xixia invaded the northwest border and repeatedly defeated Song Jun.
Ouyang Xiu, Fan Zhongyan and others tried to carry out political reform to save the crisis in the Northern Song Dynasty, but they were successively hit by the establishment. In this case, Ouyang Xiu was worried that the painful history of the Five Dynasties was about to repeat itself. The History of the Old Five Dynasties, which Xue was ordered to study while he was in office, was "complicated but untrue" and did not help to persuade good and punish evil. So I did it myself and wrote a 74-volume History of the New Five Dynasties.
Ouyang Xiu cares about the national economy and people's livelihood and advocates innovation. He advocated Confucian thought of running the country, cared about current affairs, actively joined the WTO, resolutely opposed Buddhism and strongly criticized its harm. He is courageous, knowledgeable and enterprising, and wants to do something for the country and the nation.
Ouyang Xiu opposed humiliation, refused to build military equipment, and advocated strengthening combat readiness and reforming current politics. In the face of the crisis facing the country and the nation, Ouyang Xiu wrote this preface in the hope that the rulers of the Song Dynasty can learn from history and warn them to learn from history, be prepared for danger in times of peace, avoid procrastination and make every effort to govern, and should not be satisfied with superficial vanity to arouse their vigilance.