Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 8 — Enclosures

To Chief Minister Chen Jingxuan of Xichuan西川陳敬瑄相公

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 · 192 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 8 — 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 rising to the eighth commission and crowning the Three Terraces

伏睹除書。伏承相公以祝鳩之榮。兼戴貂之貴。禮登八命。寵冠三台。伏惟感慶兼極。伏以掌邦敎之司。無人則闕。負國璽之任。有德始居。昔丁固休徵。終叶生松之夢。戴憑奧學。曾標奪席之名。然十八年而旣居後時。五十重而何益於事。曷若相公雄臨玉壘。榮奉金輿。昔也坐振風謠。作一方之慈父。今乃立迎天寵。爲萬乘之主人。使西夷免怨於後予。南詔永知於戀聖。是以。秩歸鳳闕。化洽龜城。躡高蹤於黃闥紫扉。耀偉質於朱衣皓帶。豈獨一時之盛事。實爲萬代之美譚。某早沐眷知。不任欣抃云云。

I have humbly seen the letter of appointment. I learn that the Chief Minister joins the glory of the office that holds the teaching of the state to the honor of wearing sable, that in rites he rises to the eighth commission, and that in favor he crowns the Three Terraces. My thanks and my joy are both at their height. I humbly consider that the office which holds the teaching of the state is left empty when there is no man for it, and that the charge of bearing the seal of the state is taken up only by one who has virtue. Long ago the good omen of Ding Gu answered at last to his dream of a pine growing upon him, and the deep learning of Dai Ping once won him the name of the man who took away the mats. Yet eighteen years was already too late, and fifty mats piled up, what did they add to the business of the state? How could either be like the Chief Minister, who looks down in might upon Yulei and upholds the golden carriage in glory? In days past he sat and shook out the songs of good rule and became the kind father of one region. Now he stands and meets the favor of heaven and becomes host to the lord of ten thousand chariots. He has kept the western tribes from the complaint "why does he come to us last?" and has made Nanzhao know forever what it is to long for the sage. And so his rank returns to the phoenix gates and his teaching soaks into Guicheng. He treads the high traces at the yellow gates and the purple doors, and he makes his great substance shine in the vermilion robe and the white sash. How should this be the splendid affair of one age alone? It is truly a fair tale for ten thousand generations. I bathed early in his regard and in his knowing of me, and I cannot contain my joy and my clapping, and so on.

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