A statement asking that the monk Hongding be made superintendent of monks within the circuit奏請僧宏鼎駐管內僧正狀
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 · 163 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 4 — Memorials to the Throne 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.
1A monk who chants day and night for the return of the imperial carriage
The monk named above has washed his traces clean of the four floods and holds his mind to the eight right paths. He has set forth the Law to the company bound to him by karma, and has put his labor into words that have no equal. Since the kingfisher banners went far off to look into the songs of the people, and the vermilion edicts called again and again for reports of victory, the vile chieftain is not yet destroyed and the keen troops are still hard at work. Hongding has always had thirty monks chant merit by day and by night, opening wide the road of awakening and teaching the whole city. What he wishes is that the owl's nest be overturned early, and the phoenix carriage turned back at once. This does not touch upon the highest principle, yet it truly springs from sincerity. Besides, the subordinate commanderies of this circuit are already many and the temples are not few, and without a head it is hard to keep the black-robed company in order. I humbly beg that your sagely kindness look closely into what is asked, and allow him to be filled into the post of superintendent of monks within this circuit, and then grant him the purple robe. What is hoped is that with the gold brocade upon his body he may give play to the fine spirit of one who rears hawks, and with the jade handle in his hand he may curb the mad crowd that is like drunken elephants. I report this with respect, and humbly await the imperial rescript.
Interlinear notes 1
The source text writes 弘鼎 in the body and 宏鼎 in the title. The body's graph is followed, giving Hongding. — translator