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

To Chief Minister Zheng Tian鄭畋相公

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 · 208 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 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 return as chief minister, holding the Orchid Terrace and the plum cauldron together

伏見二月六日制書。伏承相公正居宏父。光弼聖君。兼摠蘭臺。再調梅鼎。凡云遠者近者。莫不舞之蹈之。伏以相公碩德茂勛。雄才奧學。播在四方之口。沃於萬乘之心。固絶贊揚。但增瞻仰。況自關中聚寇。岐下屯兵。率先諸侯。累展奇略。是以。才趨鳳輦。便陟鸞臺。遠涉山川。行就九天之寵。克平水土。坐升百日之榮。竹宮旣託於淸規。芸舘更歸於雅望。則乃孫叔敖之愼守愈貴愈恭。胡伯始之累遷有倫有要。永憑上德。佇賀中興。使仲父執鞭。酇侯捧轡。驅蠢動入華胥之域。格蠻夷歸虞舜之風。某早沐深知。遠聆殊拜。末由陳賀。抃聳倍深云云。

I have humbly seen the decree of the sixth day of the second month. I learn that you now sit in the seat of Hongfu, that you aid and give light to the sagely ruler, that you hold the Orchid Terrace as well, and that you season the plum cauldron once more. All men, far and near alike, dance and leap for it. I humbly consider that your great virtue and rich merit, your mighty gifts and your deep learning, are spread abroad in the mouths of the four quarters and have soaked into the heart of the lord of ten thousand chariots. There is no room left for praise, and I can only look up the more. Still more so since the bandits gathered in Guanzhong and troops were camped below Qi, when you went before all the lords and set out marvelous plans again and again. Therefore you had barely hurried to the phoenix carriage when you climbed at once to the Orchid Terrace, and you crossed mountains and rivers far off and went forward to the favor of the ninth heaven, and you settled the land and the waters and rose while seated to the glory of a hundred days. The Bamboo Palace was already given over to your pure rule, and the Rue Hall has come back once more to one of noble repute. This is as when Sunshu Ao kept his place with care and grew the humbler as he grew the more honored, and as when Hu Boshi moved up again and again and yet kept order and measure. Leaning upon your high virtue forever, I wait to offer joy for the restoring of the dynasty. Let Guan Zhong hold the whip and the Marquis of Zan take up the reins. Drive all that stirs and crawls into the land of Huaxu, and bring the tribes of the frontier back to the manners of Yu Shun. I bathed early in your deep regard, and I have heard from afar of this rare appointment. I have no way to come and offer my congratulations, and my clapping and leaping are deeper by twice, and so on.

‹ To Chief Minister Zheng Tian — the second Contents To his lordship Wang, Commander in Chief at Huazhou — the third ›Listen to this piece