Will the King’s Tooth Be Healed?

Will 10 Goats Suffice?

Crack crack pok!

In slavecrafted Bronze we glorify

Ancestral honour,

Recording our questions and your replies,

The Stimulus and Response of Heaven and Earth.

The rites tie us to our Past,

To stabilize the Present

And ensure our continued Future

Inviting our ancestors to the feast,

May the fragrance satisfy.

Shaman, scribe, cook, diviner, Yi Yin honours you.

Xu Yuan (MSB), Chang’an 186 BCE.

(Written at the capital of the Western Han Dynasty, commemorating the Shang Dynasty legacy in ideological support of the Han)