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

To Chief Minister Li Du of the Salt and Iron Office鹽鐵李都相公

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 · 179 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 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 grain transport as well

伏承榮膺寵命。兼掌漕運。伏惟感慰。伏以鑄山熬海。旣標富國之權。紫帳皁襜。固是安邦之彦。況從多事。諒託全才。相公中庸日彰。大任天降。舟楫暫妨於援溺。棟樑必俟於扶危。今者三年禮成。萬乘恩至。假途端揆。正位司元。憑孔僅之智謀。繼齊桓之霸業。必也廣施奇計。遍致豐資。答上帝之殊恩。振中興之盛事。凡云品彙。孰不欣歡。某每慙糠粃居前。久阻鹽梅入用。主張多失。固難稱老成人。交代叨榮。無以告新令尹。抃慰兢惕。不任下情。拜賀末由。攀戀空切云云。

He has received a favored command in honor and takes charge of the grain transport as well, and I bow low in thanks and gladness. I humbly consider that to cast the mountains and boil the sea marks out the power that makes a state rich, and that the purple tent and the black carriage curtain belong surely to a man of parts who settles the realm. Still more, in a time of many affairs, the charge is truly given to a whole talent. The Chief Minister's middle way grows plainer by the day, and a great charge has come down from heaven. Boat and oar were kept for a while from saving the drowning, but ridgepole and beam were surely waiting to hold up what was in danger. Now the rite of three years is complete and the kindness of the ruler of ten thousand chariots has arrived. He borrows the road of the chief minister and sits straight in the seat that heads the accounts. Leaning upon the wisdom and the plans of Kong Jin, he carries on the work of the overlord Duke Huan of Qi. He will surely spread wondrous plans widely and bring in rich means everywhere, answering the special kindness of the Lord on High and shaking out the full deeds of the restoration. Of all the kinds of living things, who would not be glad? I am always ashamed that chaff and empty husks stand in front, and for long I have been kept from the salt and the plum coming into use. My management has lost much, and it is hard indeed to call me a man ripe in years. I take my turn and unworthily receive the honor, and I have nothing to tell the new governor. I clap and take comfort, and I am wary and afraid, and I cannot bear the feeling of one below. I have no way to bow and offer my congratulations, and my clinging longing is keen and comes to nothing, and so on.

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