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Vocabulary

藤 Téng (N) name of a small Warring States period dukedom

藤文公 Téng Wén Gong: Late fourth century B.C. ruler of Téng;
the Mencius suggests he patronized Mencius with some sincerity.

竭 jíe (V) to exhaust

免 mǐan (V) to evade (some form of evil or punishment)

昔 xí (Adv) of old, in the past

大 tài *(Adj) great, ultimate (in titles, Tài is usually bestowed as a post-
humous name only to ancestral kings viewed as founding rulers); the
word is cognate with dà (big), and in this extended sense the
character is usually written 太 (tài)

大王 (太王) Tài Wáng: A “pre-dynastic” king of the Zhou royal
house (he was retrospectively viewed as a 王 in light of the legend
told in this passage)

邠 bin (N) a place, probably located in the Fén 汾 River Valley in Shanxi 山西

狄 dí (N) a non-Chinese people of the north during the Zhou (later, 狄
refers to any northern non-Chinese adversary)

侵 qin (V) to invade, to encroach

皮 pí (N) skin, pelts

幣 bì (N) bolts of fabric (an early medium of exchange)

珠 zhu (N) pearls

玉 yù (N) jade

屬 zhǔ (V) to call into assembly, to give an order [N.B. Cognate with 屬
shǔ: (V) to belong as a subordinate to, to be of a kind with]

耆 qí (N) an elder

老 lăo *(N) an elder