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

To Minister Pei Qianyu of Xuanshe — the third宣歙裵虔餘尙書 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 · 185 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.

1Zhexi encroaches on the powers of the Xuanshe office

當司宣歙院。被浙西越局侵權。差官奪務。以強自恃。謂暴無傷。仰計通仁。備詳深弊。今者鹺務却仍舊貫。已有詔書。浙西雖近宋聾。固殊魯瘠。只解租庸副職。尙提招討兵符。宜慙已往之非。用結將來之好。竊知猶尋亂轍。愈弄雄權。再署周正。罔思唐令。宣歙院上違聖旨。下阻群情。實虧臣子之誠。豈逭鬼神之怒。旣失用和爲貴。唯知長惡不悛。伏望尙書洞察事情。俾全理體。雖知秦鏡固無遺鑑之虞。或恐齊竽猶有濫吹之者。能摧狡妄。遠托威嚴。亦慮官吏驚疑。必望深加撫恤。幸甚。

The Xuanshe office of this commission has had its powers encroached upon by Zhexi, which has overstepped its bounds and sent officers to seize its business. Relying on its own strength, it holds that violence does no harm. Looking up, I reckon that this will reach a man of benevolence, and so I set out the deep harm of it in full. Now there is an edict already that the salt business shall follow the old practice. Zhexi may be near to the deaf man of Song, but it is surely not the lean man of Lu. It knows only the assistant post for taxes and levies, yet it still holds the tally of a commander for suppression. It ought to be ashamed of the wrong it has done and to knit a friendship for the time to come. Yet I know in secret that it still seeks out the ruts of disorder and toys the more with its mighty power, signing again by the calendar of Zhou and giving no thought to the statutes of Tang. The Xuanshe office defies the sage's will above and blocks the feeling of the many below. Truly it has broken the sincerity of a subject; how shall it escape the anger of the spirits? It has lost already the rule that holds harmony dear, and knows only how to feed its evil and never repent. I humbly hope that the Minister will see through the state of the case and let the body of right reason be kept whole. Though I know that the mirror of Qin has no fear of missing anything in its view, I fear that among the pipes of Qi there may still be one who blows without the skill. Let him break their cunning and their rashness, so that we may lean upon his majesty from afar. I fear too that the officers will be startled and full of doubt, and I hope he will surely comfort and care for them deeply. That would be a great good fortune.

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