Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 6 — Tang Reports

A statement of thanks for my cousin Zhu being appointed to Mianzhou again謝弟柷再除綿州狀

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 · 254 Chinese characters · reading time 1.0 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 6 — Tang Reports 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.

1How Kou Xun stayed on in Yingchuan

右件官。是某堂弟。今得進奏院狀報。奉某月某日恩制。除金吾將軍。被本州官吏衆狀擧留。續准勑旨。依前充綿州刺史。某嘗讀後漢書。見寇恂爲潁川守。後拜金吾。從上經過潁川。郡人遮道願借寇君。乃留一年以慰百姓。此實國家殊寵。郡邑美譚。萬代之來一人而已。誰知盛事。得屬鄙宗。安貧恤孤。潁川之政化雖乏。出官入仕。子翼之官資略同。感深而喜作悲端。效淺而榮爲懼本。伏以高柷粗閑吏術。忝荷君恩。分憂而地壓劍關。理俗而塵銷鈴閣。今者纔升緹騎。却擁朱輪。謂施撫葺之能。特徇衆多之請。此皆相公愛忘其短。仁及於微。仰贊帝兪。俯從群願。某唯知提訓。俾愼揣摩。同驅軾下之熊。但期靜理。雖睹堂前之燕。免恨分飛限守戎藩。末由陳賀云云。

For the above: the officer named above is your servant's cousin. Now I have the report of the Bureau of Memorials. It says that by the gracious decree of such a day of such a month he was appointed General of the Golden Guard; that the officials of his own prefecture sent up a statement together, asking that he be kept; and that in accordance with the imperial order which followed he was made Prefect of Mianzhou as before. Your servant once read the Book of the Later Han and saw there that Kou Xun was governor of Yingchuan and was later made Chief of the Golden Mace. When he passed through Yingchuan in the emperor's train, the people of the commandery blocked the road and asked to borrow Lord Kou, and so he stayed a year to comfort them. This was truly a rare favor of the state and a fair tale of the commanderies, and in ten thousand generations there has been but one such man. Who could have known that so splendid a thing would fall to my own humble house? He is content in poverty and kind to the orphaned. The governing and the teaching of Yingchuan are beyond him, but in going out to office and coming in to service his rank is much the same as Ziyi's. My gratitude is deep, and so my joy becomes the beginning of sorrow. My worth is slight, and so glory becomes the root of fear. I humbly consider that Gao Zhu is passably skilled in the arts of an official and has unworthily received the ruler's grace. Sharing the cares of state, he held a land that presses upon the Sword Barrier. Ordering the customs of the people, he saw the dust vanish from his office hall. Now he had barely risen to the mounted guard when he was given the red-wheeled carriage again. It is said that he showed the skill of one who soothes and mends, and so you have followed the request of the many for his sake. All this is because the Chief Minister loves him and forgets what is short in him, and because his kindness reaches down to the lowly, so that he looks up and helps the emperor's assent, and looks down and follows the wish of the crowd. Your servant knows only to keep admonishing and teaching him, and to make him weigh matters with care, so that he drives the bear beneath his carriage rail along with the rest and yet looks only for quiet order, and so that, though he sees the swallows before the hall, he is spared the grief of flying apart. Bound to the guard of my frontier command, I have no way to come and offer my congratulations, and so on.

Interlinear notes 1

This may also be read as "the officials and the people sent up a statement." — tr.

‹ A statement asking promotion for a staff officer — Xue LiContentsA statement of thanks for release from the post of Salt and Iron Commissioner of the Circuits, and for the added office of Palace Attendant and a real fief ›Listen to this piece