To Vice Minister Xiahou Tan of the Ministry of Rites禮部夏侯潭侍郞
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 · 133 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 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.
1On his taking charge of the examinations as Vice Minister of Rites
He has received a favored command in honor, and I bow low in thanks and gladness. The Vice Minister has the bright mirror of Taichu, which the sun and the moon can hardly pass, and the fair bearing of Xiaoruo, which the dust of the world cannot stain. The house of the scholars opens its door and window apart for him, and the gate of chancellors surely carries on its bow and its fur coat. So, beginning by spreading his power in the Censorate, he is soon seen taking charge of the examinations in the Bureau of Rites. In his career he has followed the road of the pure offices throughout, and in his hold upon himself he shakes out an upright manner for long. The cypresses stood in rows in the morning frost, and yesterday he bowed to the censors who climbed the terrace. The cassia opened under the night moon, and this morning he chooses the students who enter the room. He gathers pearls until the isle of Penglai waits empty, and he searches out jade until the peak of Lantian has little color left. He answers the lifted hopes of the upright men of all under heaven, and he stills the cry of talent kept down among the scholars in the examination yard. I bathed early in his particular care, and I cannot bear my joy and my applause, and so on.