Niu

The ox recurs in four passages as a creature whose meaning shifts with its circumstances: it can embody docility, become the object of an unjust loss, lend its strength to an image of steadfast purpose, or mark a traveler’s failure to remain gentle and self-possessed. Across these appearances, the animal links conduct to consequence rather than carrying a single fixed symbolism.

Innocence and Loss

In the third line of Innocence, an ox is tied up, then found and carried off by a passerby. The owner is described as free from insincerity, yet innocence offers no protection: the people nearby suffer the calamity of being accused and apprehended. The ox’s theft thus turns a private loss into a wider injustice, showing how an innocent circumstance can expose others to suspicion and punishment.

Docility and Steadfastness

In the guidance for Clinging and Brightness, the cow supplies a different example: the subject is to nourish a docility like hers, alongside firmness and correctness. Gentleness here is not passivity but a quality to cultivate within a course that can achieve success and good fortune.

In the second line of Retreat, the subject holds fast to his purpose as if bound by the hide of a yellow ox, which cannot be broken. The image draws on the animal’s material strength to express resolution that cannot be severed. Set beside the cow’s docility, it gives the recurring animal motif two complementary uses: yielding conduct and durable commitment.

The Traveler’s Lost Quality

The final line of The Wanderer presents a bird burning its nest and a stranger who first laughs, then cries out. The passage explains the reversal through what he has lost: his ox-like docility has been surrendered too readily, and evil follows. Unlike the tied ox or the unbreakable hide, this ox is figurative—a standard of temperate conduct that the traveler has failed to keep. Its loss completes the motif’s contrast between qualities that protect and the carelessness that brings harm.