A statement recommending Sun Duan of the Guishun army奏薦歸順軍孫端狀
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) · 2 passages · 108 Chinese characters · reading time 0.4 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.
1Sun Duan, Commissioner in Chief of Troops and Horses of the Guishun army
歸順軍都知兵馬使銀靑光祿大夫檢校國子祭酒兼左武衛將軍御史中丞上柱國孫端
Sun Duan, Commissioner in Chief of Troops and Horses of the Guishun army, Silver and Blue Grand Master of Glorious Happiness, Acting Chancellor of the Directorate of Education, concurrently General of the Left Militant Guard, Vice Censor in Chief, Supreme Pillar of State.
As the bird in the nest knows the wind and the sunflower in the garden turns toward the sun, the officer named above has thrown himself upon good teaching and has put away his crooked designs for good. Since he has already mended the heart that raised an axe against you, he may stand in the ranks of those who hold the halberd. Looking up in hope that he be singled out and encouraged, I have at once drawn this up and reported upon it. I humbly beg that your sagely kindness grant him one office by special favor, and order him put to use at the front of the army. I hope that he may lead the crowd who are grateful for your grace, and rid the land forever of the crowd grown ripe in evil. With respect I set this down and report it, and humbly await the imperial rescript.