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 · 125 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.
1The grand warden of Linhuai who carries on the old traces of Zheng Hong
I learn that he has already reached his honored garrison and taken up his post. I offer my congratulations. Long ago Zheng Hong became grand warden of Linhuai. A bear first mounted the crossbar of his carriage, and deer took their place beside the shaft. He handed down the fame of his rule over one commandery, and he climbed in the end to the favored rank of the Three Dukes. The auspicious sign came true indeed, and the fair tale has rung out ever since. Now the Attendant's clan flourishes east of the mountains, and his authority looks down upon the banks of the Si. He carries on in truth the fragrant traces of Zheng Hong, and he is fit to share the distant cares of the sage ruler. Still more so since the troops of Pei have laid down their arms and the people of Huai have gone back to their work. He hangs the loving sun over one city and shakes a harmonious wind through the four borders. The feeling of the many is truly in accord, and a new commission is not far off. My own nearby border touches upon his, and his rare regard came down to me first. I clap my hands and am comforted, I look up and hold fast, and my sincere heart is only the keener, and so on.