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 · 125 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 5 — 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.
1Fifteen thousand nine hundred and thirty-five pieces of lacquerware for tribute in the sixth year of Qianfu
當道造成乾符六年供進漆器一萬五千九百三十五事
Fifteen thousand nine hundred and thirty-five pieces of lacquerware, made in this circuit for tribute in the sixth year of Qianfu.
The lacquerware named above was not made with excessive cunning, and in use it has the goodness of sound material. It is hoped that it may rest on the rule of prizing thrift and early come to a fashion wholly new. Though it is put to shame by fine jade, it may perhaps stand in place of a glass bottle. The roads have held much danger and the stars and frosts have changed many times, so the tribute of vessels could hardly pass over ten thousand li, and the convoy was held back three years in the end. The proper time being already missed, the one worry is the months gone empty. Your servant now sends Xin Congshi, Silver and Blue Grand Master of Glorious Happiness, Acting Guest of the Heir Apparent and also Vice Censor in Chief, Supreme Pillar of State, to take charge of them and present them with this statement. Respectfully presented.