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

Text of the Chorye rite (醮禮) offered to Taiyi (太一)太一醮禮文

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 · 156 Chinese characters · reading time 1.7 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。名非常名。神則與道同體。義伐不義。天其以手借人。某等各揔兵機。甫臨賊境。利在速戰。雖知振旅以遄征。死不復生。猶恐無辜之同斃。故執剛柔之柄。徐觀逆順之機。夫何無識之徒。終未體予之意。復從草竊之盜。自速巢焚之災。彼計墮玆。是我幸也。不以此時而得制。其於後悔也曷追。迫此下情。聒于冲聽。惟冀高高之鑒。遄加赫赫之威。致令誅滅頑凶。致首梟而正律。撫循父老。解面縛而受降。云云。

And so forth. The name is not a name that is ever constant, and so the god is of one body with the Way; and since righteousness strikes at what is unrighteous, heaven lends its hand to men.

We So-and-so, each leading the frame of an army, have at last reached the brigands' bounds. The advantage lies in fighting quickly, and we knew it was fitting to rouse the troops and strike in haste; yet the dead do not come to life again, and we feared that the guiltless would die along with them. Therefore we took the handle of hardness and of softness, and slowly watched the signs of defiance and of compliance.

How then has a crowd without knowledge failed in the end to understand our intent, and followed the plundering thieves once more, and called down of itself the calamity of its nest's burning? That their design has fallen to this is good fortune for us. If we do not hold them down at this time, what will repenting afterward reach?

This heart of one below is pressed hard, and makes a noise at your hidden hearing. I pray only that with your high and lofty mirror you quickly add your shining and shining majesty, so that the obdurate and the vicious are cut down and destroyed and their heads hung up to set the law upright, and that the elders of the districts are soothed and the bonds of those who come over are loosed, and their surrender received. And so forth.

Interlinear notes 1

三軍都行

The Three Armies all perform it together.

‹ Sacrificial address offered to the Heavenly God of Gyebyeon Fort at Ulju (蔚州戒邊城)ContentsSacrificial address serving the gods of the mountains and of the sea together ›Listen to this piece