Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 39

Text for the offering rite to Mars held in the inner hall內殿行火星醮禮文

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 · 128 Chinese characters · reading time 1.4 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 39 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.

主禮主視。爲德最尊。作災作祥。報人不僭。眷言眇質。仰止眞庥。可畏惟威。常軫嚴恭之素。必視所在。庶無乖戾之行。何涂月之紀。時向房星而犯度。稱爲法使。雖出入之無常。謫示人君。欲飭修而有省。玆深危懼。切備禬禳。敢依金籙之科。祗展琅庖之薦。伏望享一純之禮。表三徙之休。兵革載韜。永絶四方之警。宗祧不拔。增延萬世之基。

You have charge of the rites and charge of the spring, and your virtue is the highest of all; you make calamity and you make auspiciousness, and your requital to men never goes awry.

Looking back, with a worthless substance I look up for true help. What I dread is your majesty alone, and so I always keep in mind a grave and respectful bearing, and taking care to observe the station where you stand, I wish to have no conduct that goes awry. Yet how is it that about the twelfth month you turned toward the Room constellation (房) and trespassed upon its degrees? Though you are called the envoy charged with the Law, whose comings and goings are not fixed, yet to show reproof to the sovereign is meant to make him take himself in hand, amend, and examine himself.

So my peril and dread grow deep, and I earnestly make ready the turning away of calamity. Daring to follow the rite of the golden register, I reverently spread out the offerings of the jade-like kitchen.

Prostrate, I pray that you receive this wholly unmixed rite and show us the beauty of withdrawing by three stations. Let arms be gathered away, so that the alarms of the four quarters are forever cut off; and let the ancestral shrine stand unuprooted, lengthening still further the foundation of ten thousand generations.

Interlinear notes 1

漢書云。雖天子。必視法星所在。

The Hanshu says, "Even the Son of Heaven must observe the station where the star of the Law stands."

‹ Text for the regular spring offering rite of the high lanternContentsInvocation announced beforehand ›Listen to this piece