A statement asking promotion for a staff officer — Xue Li請轉官從事狀 某官薛礪
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 · 67 Chinese characters · reading time 0.3 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.
1To be Administrator to the Surveillance Commissioner
For the above: the officer named above. Min Sun was ranked among his master's disciples truly for his virtuous conduct, and Chen Lin held office truly by the splendor of his writing. It is when the wood is deep that one comes to know the iris and the orchid, and when the leaves have fallen that one first knows the pine and the cassia. He has made his principles deep and firm, and he showed his ability early. Far off, I have unworthily received the glory of a command beyond the gate, and I lean only upon the fineness of his planning. I humbly ask that he be raised in office, that his robe and badge be changed accordingly, and that he be moved to serve as Administrator to the Surveillance Commissioner.