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) · 2 passages · 153 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 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.
1One tent of blue felt
靑氈帳一口金銅裝鉸具
One tent of blue felt, fitted with gilt bronze hinges.
Of the above: I have met with your kindness, and you have granted me this gift. You entrusted it to a messenger of your own and guarded it with strong men. It climbed the dangerous road from afar, and I was able to pitch it at my office. Without borrowing ridgepole and beam laid crosswise, it can have door and window fully open. Seen from outside it is a single lotus peak. Enjoyed from within it is a thousand folds of brocade waves. Besides, its top marks the morning sun and its brow spreads the dawn cloud. When I chant quietly the bamboo blind sways in the wind, and when I look down the ground rug is spread like snow. Spread or folded, it makes a grand sight either way. Going or staying, I wear your deep benevolence forever. There is no one who does not boast of this rare model from the desert, and it startles the many ears of the Jiang and the Huai. The crouching dragon steals a name, and may surely pillow high without care. The barbarian leopard has made its merit, and plans may surely be laid and victory decided. I look only for a victory, and I rely wholly on your shelter. What I bear on my head is deep, and how can my setting it out reach to it? I humbly consider, and so on.
Interlinear notes 1
To pair with "the crouching dragon" above, this should be a word for a man or for soldiers; but the 虜 of the received text may stand for some other graph, so it has been left as the received text has it. — tr.