Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 9 — Enclosures

To Minister of Works Zhou Bao of Zhexi — the third浙西周寶司空 第三

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 · 169 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 9 — 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.

1Hoping to go forward hand in hand

揚示詔書。仰窺聖旨。佇攀高躅。倍激壯懷。司空寄綰吳門。瞰懸魏闕。況奉臣哉之命。必興王者之師。但希水簇舟舡。幸遵舊俗山堆。戈甲早振雄威。副大君旰食之勤。慰下走朝飢之望。某秖看風信。便泛江程。五兩翩翻。解指朝天之路。三軍踊躍。待申破竹之功。許接後塵。遠示行日。儻可從心所欲。必希携手同行。王導有言。無作楚囚相對。劉琨養勇。以誅逆虜爲期。事可榮今。功何讓古。旣銜帝語。勿老師徒。願因江漢之征。得遂瀟湘之遇云云。

He has spread out the imperial edict and shown it to me, and I look up and glimpse the sage's will. Waiting to climb after his lofty footsteps, my stout heart is stirred twice over. The Minister of Works has his charge bound at the gate of Wu and looks down from afar upon the palace gates. Still more, having received the command that says "You are a true subject", he will surely raise the army of a true king. I hope only that boats gather on the water, following happily the old custom, and that on the hills the spears and armor are piled high and soon shake out a mighty majesty, meeting the diligence of a great ruler who eats late and comforting the hope of a lowly runner who hungers in the morning. I watch only for the word of the wind and then float out upon the river road. The five-ounce vane flutters and knows how to point out the road to court; the three armies leap up and wait to set forth the merit of splitting bamboo. Let him allow me to follow in his dust and show me from afar the day of his setting out. If I may do as my heart desires, I hope above all that we take hands and go together. Wang Dao said, "Do not sit facing one another like captives of Chu." Liu Kun nourished his courage and set the cutting down of the rebels as his term. The deed may bring glory upon our own day; in merit why should we yield to the men of old? Since he holds the emperor's word in his mouth already, let him not let his soldiers grow old. I hope that by this campaign on the Jiang and the Han we may accomplish a meeting on the Xiao and the Xiang. And so on.

Interlinear notes 1

Read as an allusion to the Book of Documents, 臣哉鄰哉, and so as "the command that made me a subject." It may also be read as "the word that I am truly a subject." — translator

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