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 · 141 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 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 governing Wuxing once more
The other day I saw the letter of appointment. I learn that he has received a favored commission in glory and will govern Wuxing once more. I offer my congratulations. Of late the Attendant looked down upon the Zha River and shook out the manner of Yuan An in full. I had just heard that he held the new orchid high when I saw him divide the old bamboo again. Truly one may say that the fame of his rule grows fuller by the day, and that heaven follows what men desire. The letter summoning Grand Warden Huang went away instead, following the phoenix, and the crowd that begged to keep Governor Kou has met the spring and brought it back. From now on the mist will seal the tea beds and the moon will hang over the duckweed shoals. If he does not sing of the traveler returning to Dongting, he will chant of the master of Jingu. He will take his joy in three more years and revive the whole region in the end. After that he will enter and dwell at the blue chain gate and sit and draft the imperial edicts. The blessings he brings to the common people are many already, and it will not be late for him to take the potter's wheel in hand. I have borne his rare regard from early days, and my clapping and my comfort are deep indeed. I have no way to bow and offer my congratulations, and my gazing and hastening toward him are twice as keen, and so on.