A statement on Li Kai and the administrators, sheriffs and others below him奏李楷已下參軍縣尉等狀
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 · 136 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 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.
1Subordinate clerks depend upon getting the right men
The statement above stands as it did before. I humbly consider that your servant's prefecture is the land of Huaihai, that is Yangzhou, and that its commanderies and counties have much business. To speak once and for all of subordinate clerks, everything rests upon getting the right men. I always worry that the taxes fall short and fall behind, and it grows harder to call men to account and sort the matter out. If I were to wait upon the weighing of the Ministry and its draft appointments, I fear I would lose the chance to recommend worthy men. The officers named above are all scholars of the noble kind, and have the will of the men of old. Their learning being ample, they take office, for they know already that a salary lies within it; and seeing what is good they start as though in alarm, yet they are not ashamed to stand below, their skill being complete. They are fit to take part in your servant's military business, and fit to stand in place of your servant's town officials. If posts left vacant were lent to them by way of trial, they would show rare results. How much more so when they hold the joy of the motley coat and hope to climb to the glory of the yellow ribbon. I humbly beg that your sagely kindness consent to what your servant asks. In venturing upon the imperial gaze I cannot bear my awe. With respect I set this down and report it, and humbly await the imperial rescript.
Interlinear notes 1
The source text writes 辯; it is taken as interchangeable with 辦 and read accordingly. — translator