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 · 149 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 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.
I consider quietly that the oath in the annals of Jin made much of carrying gifts back and forth, and that the reproof in the Chu ci was ashamed of those who rise and fall with the waves. To speak of having right and having rites for all time, it lies only in knowing harmony and keeping harmony. Still more so when a humane border is the fine man who joins one state to another, and a good neighbor is the treasure that keeps a state whole. First and last they fit together. What difference is there between now and long ago? Last spring he honored me with a long letter and sent rich gifts besides. His envoy was a senior officer of the army gate, and his gift was a horse of Dayuan from the splendid plank road. He drew on the words in which Xia and Yin laid the blame upon themselves and spread them over several sheets. He raised the principle by which Zhu and Lu gave their people rest, and he soothed the borders near him. In this one sees how a true man sets his heart, and how the lords of old conducted their affairs. How could I let my admiration for it fade? Now I send a man of my own, hurrying a small token on its way. It is not enough for a return, but I shall hold it a friendship for all time. I beg that he look upon it and understand.