Hči, ki je v reki iskala očeta

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Hči, ki je v reki iskala očeta

Shuxian Nihe of Qianwei had a daughter named Xiong. In the third year of Yongjian, Nihe was serving as the county’s officer of merit. The county magistrate, Zhao Zhi, sent him with an official dispatch to pay his respects to the governor of Ba Commandery. Traveling by boat in the tenth month, he fell into the water at the Cheng Rapids and drowned. His body could not be recovered. Xiong wailed in anguish, caring nothing for her own survival. She told her younger brother Xian and her mother, “Search diligently for Father’s body. If you cannot find him, I mean to sink into the water and seek him myself.” Xiong was then twenty-seven. She had two sons, Gong, aged five, and Shi, aged three. She made each of them an embroidered sachet, filled it with gold, pearls, and rings, and hung it about his neck. Her cries of grief never ceased, and her kinsfolk feared for her in private. By the fifteenth day of the twelfth month, her father’s body had still not been found. Xiong took a small boat to the place where he had fallen in. After crying aloud several times, she threw herself into the water, circled in the current, and sank to the bottom. She appeared to her younger brother in a dream and told him, “On the twenty-first day, Father and I will emerge together.” On the appointed day, just as in the dream, she and her father floated up together in the river, clasped in each other’s arms. The county magistrate reported the matter to the commandery governor, Su Deng, who in turn submitted it to the Imperial Secretariat. An officer of the Revenue Bureau was then sent to erect a stele for Xiong and have her likeness depicted, so that her supreme filial devotion might be known.