When soldiers are near

Critical Text

Yinqueshan Text

 カ 各玥 餢の

Shiyijia zhu Text

  畍  禥 芥 禥 芥 玥 κ ﹎ 癩 很 癩 很 玥    

Translation

When soldiers are near, things sell dearly. When things sell dearly, wealth is exhausted. When wealth is exhausted, people are hard pressed by local taxes.

Annotations

It is possible that baixing κ ﹎ (which we have rendered here as the vanilla "people") is not in the Yinqueshan text. It is hard to find space for these two graphs in the long, illegible middle section of the bamboo strip, and the Tongdian, which is similar in most regards to a reconstructed Yinqueshan reading, omits them.