Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 1 — Memorials

A memorial of congratulation on the investing of the princesses賀封公主表

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) 桂苑筆耕集 · Choe Chiwon · 886 (Tang, 6th year of the Zhonghe era · Silla, 12th year of King Heongang) · 1 passages · 243 Chinese characters · reading time 1.0 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 1 — Memorials A collection Choe Chiwon made by choosing out of the writings of his four years in the headquarters of Gao Pian, military commissioner of Huainan under the Tang, binding them into twenty volumes and presenting them to King Heongang of Silla in 886. It holds 366 pieces — memorials and reports sent up to the emperor, the proclamation denouncing Huang Chao, letters to the several military commissioners, orders and dispatches issued to those under him, Daoist and Buddhist texts for services, funeral offerings, records written for the outer wall of Chengdu and for a painting of Annam, and the reports and poems he sent up to Gao Pian. Here is the first report, which begins "I am a man of Silla," and the proclamation against Huang Chao with its line, "Not only do all the men of the world think to kill you openly; the ghosts under the earth have already discussed cutting you down in secret." The last volume holds the poems he made on the voyage home to the country he had left at twelve. It is the oldest collection by a Korean that survives, and when Hong Seokju and Seo Yugu printed it with movable type in 1834 they called it "the root and the beginning of the writing of our Eastern Country." Their two prefaces are translated with it.

1The three princesses of Suining, Tangxing and Yongping

臣某言:臣得進奏院狀報,奉去年十月十四日敕旨,皇帝第十一妹封遂寧公主,長女封唐興公主,次女封永平公主,待收復京闕,備禮冊命者。芳舒玉葉,龍襲金根,鬱佳氣於高天,振歡聲於率土。臣某誠欣誠忭、頓首頓首。伏以遂寧公主德資元吉,考祥於歸妹之佔;唐興公主、永平公主譽洽肅雍,禀慶於降嬪之典。伴嫦娥於獨月,分婺女於雙星,秀發青春,光浮碧落。伏惟皇帝陛下齊家理國,恭己敬親,流鳳扆之殊恩,舉鸞閨之美命,猶以暫勞仙蹕,未復皇都,留具禮於宮闈,待成功於干羽,捧日而榮滋九族,欽風而喜播四方。臣限守藩條,不獲陪位稱慶行在,無任抃蹈聳踴之至。謹奉表陳賀以聞,臣某誠喜誠躍、頓首頓首。謹言。

Your servant So-and-so speaks. Your servant has had a report from the court liaison office, saying that by the imperial word of the fourteenth day of the tenth month of last year the emperor's eleventh younger sister is invested as Princess of Suining, his eldest daughter as Princess of Tangxing, and his second daughter as Princess of Yongping, and that the full rite of investiture will be made when the capital has been recovered. The fragrant jade leaves open out and the dragon carries on the golden root, and a fair air gathers in the high heaven and a glad sound shakes through all the land. Your servant So-and-so truly rejoices and truly claps his hands, bowing his head to the ground, bowing his head to the ground. Your servant humbly considers that the Princess of Suining has her virtue upon the ground of the great good fortune, and that the sign for her is read in the divination of the hexagram Guimei, and that the Princess of Tangxing and the Princess of Yongping have a name full of gravity and of concord, and take their happiness from the rite by which a princess is sent down in marriage. They keep Chang'e company in her lonely moon, and they part the Wunü star between two stars. Their excellence opens in the green spring, and their light rises into the blue heights. Your servant humbly considers that Your Majesty sets your house in order and rules the state, holds your own person in reverence and honors your kin, and has let flow the singular kindness of the phoenix screen and has raised up the fair command of the chamber of the luan bird. Yet because the imperial progress is still put to its labor for a while and he has not gone back to the capital, he leaves the full rite waiting in the palace chambers and waits for the merit to be brought about by the dance of shields and feathers. He holds up the sun, and glory swells among the nine degrees of kin. Men look with awe upon his wind, and gladness spreads to the four quarters. Your servant is bound to his duty in the frontier command and cannot take his place and offer congratulation at your traveling palace, and he cannot bear the utmost of his clapping and stamping and springing up. He respectfully sends up this memorial to set forth his congratulation and make it heard. Your servant So-and-so is truly glad and truly leaps up, bowing his head to the ground, bowing his head to the ground. Respectfully spoken.