Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 7 — Enclosures

To his lordship Wang, Commander in Chief at Huazhou — the third滑州都統王令公 第三

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 · 112 Chinese characters · reading time 0.4 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 7 — Enclosures 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.

1Congratulations on his arrival at the command

伏承旌憧已到鎭上訖。伏惟感慰。令公手傾霖雨。身耀福星。三入廟堂。已超仲父。一匡寰宇。更屬何人。昨者十乘啓行。九重軫慮。以爲螢不勞海灌。卵何假山摧。遂請元臣。却臨重鎭。今則徐廻龍節。靜撫雄師。下車而恩澤均沾。擧扇而仁風廣振。南燕受賜。北極紓憂。某早荷獎知。倍增欣慰云云。

I learn that your banners and pennons have already reached the command. I humbly offer my joy. Your lordship pours out the long rains with your hand, and your person shines like a star of good fortune. Three times you have entered the council hall, and you have already gone beyond Guan Zhong. To set the whole world right once more, to whom else can it belong? The other day, when the ten chariots opened the road, the Ninefold Deep was anxious, holding that a firefly needs no sea poured over it and that an egg need not borrow a falling mountain. So he asked the first of his ministers to come back and take a heavy command instead. Now you turn the dragon tally slowly and soothe your strong army in quiet. You stepped down from your carriage, and your grace fell evenly upon all. You raised your fan, and a kindly wind shook out far and wide. Southern Yan has its gift, and the Northern Pole has its cares eased. I received your encouragement and your notice early, and my gladness and comfort are doubled, and so on.