法苑珠林 49.49

49.49

Fu Xian Nihuo of Qianwei had a daughter named Xiong. In the first year of Yongjian, Nihuo served as a merit officer of the county. Zhao Zhi, the county magistrate, dispatched Nihuo to present an official letter and pay respects to the grand administrator of Ba Commandery. In the tenth month, he took a boat through the city rapids, fell into the water, and died; his corpse was lost and could not be recovered. Xiong wailed in mournful grief, having no thought of staying alive. She told her younger brother Xian and her husband, bidding them to search diligently for her father's corpse: "If you cannot find him, I wish to submerge myself to seek him." At that time Xiong was twenty-seven years of age; she had sons named Gong, aged five, and Shi, aged three. She had also made an embroidered incense pouch filled with gold, pearls, and rings, which she bestowed on her two children in advance. Mournful wailing did not cease from her mouth, and her clan quietly worried. On the fifteenth day of the twelfth month, her father's corpse had still not been found. Xiong boarded a small boat, wailed several times at the spot where her father had fallen, and finally threw herself into the water, sinking to the bottom in the swirling current. She appeared in a dream to her younger brother, saying that on the twenty-first day she would emerge together with her father. Her plunge fulfilled the appointed time just like the dream: embracing her father, she floated up together with him out of the river. The county magistrate submitted a memorial reporting the matter, and the grand administrator of the commandery, Xiao Deng, transmitted it upward to the Department of State Affairs. They dispatched a clerk of the Revenue Section to erect a stele for Xiong and depict her image to commemorate her filial piety (these two verifications are taken from the Soushenji).