Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 38

Prayer before Taejo at Gaetae Temple (開泰寺)開泰寺祖前願文

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 · 179 Chinese characters · reading time 1.6 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 38 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。臣等聞昔甄萱。以強兵勁卒。大伐新羅。其鋒不可與敵。我聖祖以一萬兵救之。其兵却退。不然。新羅之民孑然無種矣。然則其父兄子弟妻妾之得全首領。蔓葉繁支。以至今日。誠我聖之力也。今其子孫。辜負先王之德。擅興兵刃。叛逆官家。是背恩棄義不忠不孝之人也。其在先祖之慮。得不敷聞上帝。導降雷霆之怒。而忍令此屬敢搖我聖祖草創之邦業耶。伏望借以神力。俾臣等擒滅逆類。不日效捷。復築我邦家太平之基。則班師之日。當以某事報稱者。云云。

And so forth. We your servants have heard that long ago Gyeon Hwon (甄萱), with hardened troops and swift soldiers, struck greatly at Silla, and its blade-point could not be withstood. When our holy Taejo came to the rescue with ten thousand men, that army withdrew. Had it not been so, the people of Silla would have been left alone without so much as a seed remaining.

That being so, that their fathers and elder brothers, their sons and younger brothers, their wives and concubines kept their lives whole, and that the vines and leaves grew thick and the branches flourished down to this day, is truly the work of our holy Taejo.

Now their descendants have turned their backs on the former king's virtue and have wantonly raised troops and rebelled against the court; these are men who have turned from kindness and cast righteousness away, neither loyal nor filial.

In the place where the ancestors take counsel, will you not report it widely to the High Emperor and draw down a wrath like thunder? Would you bear to let this crowd dare to shake the work of the kingdom that our holy Taejo first set up?

Prostrate we pray that you lend us your numinous power, so that we your servants may take and destroy the defiant crowd and within a few days offer up our victory, and build anew the ground of our country's great peace. Then, on the day we turn the troops homeward, we shall fitly make repayment and give thanks with such-and-such an observance. And so forth.

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