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 · 166 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 10 — 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 driving off Zhuge Shuang and recovering three cities
Ever since the Yellow Turbans invaded the north and the kingfisher carriage went west, the locusts have shunned no border and the ants have already broken the dike. Within there has been no disaster to the palace halls; without, the shame of the provinces has been knotted. Zhuge Shuang eats like a pig and is hard to fill, and with the voice of a jackal he grows arrogant easily. He has stepped back onto the road of delusion and dared to trample your honored pastures. You drove the tiger ranks with your hand and went over the arts of war in your heart. One battle line was barely laid out, and three cities were recovered. The mighty merit was only just established when the patent of appointment came down. It will be the grand talk of stout men forever, and it stands apart as a fine deed among the feudal lords. I meant of late to split the nest and smoke out the den, and I long tempered my armor and drilled my troops. When I was about to send the host out, I received the imperial decree again, ordering me first to take the control of the state revenues of mountain and sea in hand and to hold down the Yangtze and the Huai, so that in putting an end to the enemy of the state I should first draw on the taxes of the realm. Yet what is to be done when I sleep at night in the camp tent and frost lies across the halberd at my pillow, and when I hang up my war coat at dawn and the sword in its case roars like thunder? In the end I wish to raise my own valor and strategy and to wipe out the vicious band in quiet. I humbly ask that you look into this.