The Shangshu (尚書), often translated as the Book of Historical Documents or just Book of Documents, is a pre-Qin dynasty compilation of documents and one of the five Confucian classics of ancient China. The idiom 歸馬放牛 originally comes from the Successful Completion of the War (武成) chapter of the Shangshu. This chapter includes the line「王來自商，至于豐。乃偃武修文，歸馬于華山之陽，放牛于桃林之野，示天下弗服。」: “The king returned from the Shang lands and went to Feng. He declared the war over and proceeded to cultivate the arts of peace. He had his [war]horses returned to the south of Mt. Hua and set his oxen to pasture in the fields of Taolin, and announced to the world that they would not be used again.”
The story goes that, at the end of the Shang dynasty, King Wu of the Zhou (周武王) defeated King Zhou of the Shang (商紂王) and established the Zhou dynasty. He instructed his soldiers to return home and to start cultivating the fields once more, putting the animals that had traveled with the army out to pasture, so that the people could once again enjoy peace. As a result, the idiom 歸馬放牛 means putting down your weapons, and that they will no longer be of any use, as hostilities have ended.
In English, there is a term, “swords into plowshares,” which derives from the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament. Isaiah 2:4 says, “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."
Photo: Paul Cooper, Taipei Times
照片：台北時報記者古德謙攝
(Paul Cooper, Taipei Times)
「尚書」是一部先秦的文獻彙編，也是儒家經書之一。「歸馬放牛」這個成語源自尚書的「武成」。文中寫道：「王來自商，至于豐。乃偃武修文，歸馬于華山之陽，放牛于桃林之野，示天下弗服。」意即：商朝末年，周武王打敗商紂王，建立周朝，於是士兵回家又開始種田，所有戰備用的牛馬也都放回田野，老百姓開始過安居樂業的日子。因此，「歸馬放牛」的意思就是讓軍人將作戰用的牛馬牧放回田野，比喻戰爭結束了，不再用兵。英文也有類似的說法，即 Swords into plowshares ，源自聖經舊約以賽亞書第二章第四節： “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”
（台北時報記者古德謙整理）
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