Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 37

Another Prayer for Rain to the Great King, the State Preceptor (國師大王)又祈雨國師大王文

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 1 passages · 139 Chinese characters · reading time 1.5 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 37 The collected writings of Yi Gyubo of Goryeo, gathered and cut in woodblock by his son Yi Ham in 1241 and revised and enlarged by his grandson Yi Ikbae in 1251. It holds poems and rhapsodies, memorials and reports sent up to the king, records written for temples and pagodas, stele and tomb inscriptions, letters and prefaces, and the state letters that passed to and from the Mongols during the invasions. The Lay of King Dongmyeong, which sings the founder of Goguryeo, stands in volume 3 of the first collection, and the daily life of a man who called himself the White Cloud Layman — with his wine, his zither and his verse — fills the later collection. The book closes with the last poem he wrote as his eyes failed and he laid down the brush, and with the dirge and tomb inscription others made for him after his death.

云云。巖巖維嶽。維神主之。民有呼籲。吏或禱祈。神輒響答。曾不移時。今者天絳大旱。乾裂厚地。微雲不興。杲日逾熾。生民拱手。立待飢死。是誰使然。罪在守吏。然國師所宗。大雄釋氏。以發露懺悔。曉喻迷類。吾儒所師。大聖孔子。以過勿憚改。垂于傳紀。予是以暴揚瑕玷。痛自責己。惟冀國師赦我積垢。導宣天澤。普潤田畝。則非特吏顔見民無厚。神亦於民。得不孤負。

And so forth.

Lofty is that great mountain, and the god has it in his keeping and presides over it. When the people cry out and the officials pray, the god answers at once like an echo, and not once has he let the moment pass.

Now heaven has sent down a great drought: the thick earth dries and cracks, not a thread of cloud rises, and the bright sun burns the hotter. The people stand with their hands clasped together, waiting to starve to death. Who has made it so? The guilt lies with the official who guards this district.

Yet the Great Hero, the Buddha (大雄釋氏), whom the State Preceptor reveres, awakened the deluded sort by the law of laying bare one's faults and repenting; and the Great Sage Confucius (孔子), whom we Confucians take for master, left it in his writings that one must not shrink from mending a fault. For this cause I bring my own blemishes into the open and reproach myself bitterly.

I pray only this: that the State Preceptor forgive the filth I have heaped up, and draw forth and spread abroad heaven's bounty, so that the fields and furrows are watered all about. Then not only will the official have a face with which to look upon the people, but the god too will be one who does not forsake them.

Interlinear notes 1

天降 — the base text has 天絳, but it is taken as an error for 降. — Translator

‹ Declaration to the God of the Great Year (大歲)Contents Another text praying for rain to the city god ›Listen to this piece