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

Thanking Minister Helian Duo of Zhenwu for a horse and a dog振武赫連鐸尙書謝馬狗

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 · 79 Chinese characters · reading time 0.3 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.

1On receiving the horse and the dog

右特蒙眷知。遠有惠賚。無庾亮的顱之害。有陸機黃耳之能。敢謂備於左牽右牽。實爲馴於執勒執緤。寧唯致遠。況解防姦。旣驅策之有期。固指蹤而無失。仰承重貺。倍荷殊私。末有報酬。益多愧悚。伏惟云云。

Of the above: I have met with his special regard, and gifts have come from afar. The horse has none of the harm of Yu Liang's white-browed mount, and the dog has the skill of Lu Ji's Yellow Ears. I may say that they are ready to be led on the left and led on the right, and they are truly tame to the hand that holds the bridle and the hand that holds the leash. Is it only that they carry a man far? Still more, they know how to guard against wrongdoing. There is a set time for whipping them on, and when the track is pointed out they surely do not miss it. I look up and accept these heavy gifts, and I owe twice over his rare kindness. I have no way to repay him, and my shame and awe are the more. I humbly consider, and so on.