Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 10 — Enclosures

To Minister Pei Qianyu, formerly of Xuanshe, with congratulations on the winter solstice前宣歙裵虔餘尙書

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 · 95 Chinese characters · reading time 0.4 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 the winter solstice

伏以禮稱迎日。傳載書雲。當寰中賀聖之晨。是水外寢兵之際。宜陳善祝。仰薦殊祥。伏惟尙書政報褰帷。慶資溫席。已捧徵黃之詔。固諧夢說之期。人仰板輿。羨老萊之榮養。帝留金鼎。待伊尹之來調。某雖戎律拘身。而淸規在想。末由拜賀。但切禱祠。

I humbly consider that the rites speak of welcoming the sun and the record tells of writing down the clouds. This is the morning when all within the realm salute the sage, and the time when arms are laid to rest beyond the water. It is fitting to set out a good wish and offer up a rare blessing. I humbly consider that the Minister's rule answers to the raising of the curtain and that his good fortune rests on the warmed mat. He has already received the letter that summons him as Grand Warden Huang was summoned, and it surely accords with the season of the dream of Yue. Men look up at his plank carriage and envy the glorious care given as by Lao Lai. The emperor keeps the golden cauldron and waits for Yi Yin to come and season it. Though the rules of the army bind my body, his pure example is in my thoughts. I have no way to bow and offer congratulations, and only pray the more earnestly.