To Zhang Gao of Shouzhou — to one setting out for his lordship's camp壽州張翶
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 · 167 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 12 — Dispatches 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.
A notice to Zhang Gao. I learn that you have already taken charge of your soldiers and are about to go forward to his lordship's camp. When I think of a far campaign, my care for you is doubled. Those who hold the axe of command all scheme for themselves beyond the gates, and those who have been given the jade tablet fill nearly the whole realm. Yet they make the tending of their household property their far design and the cutting down of the state's enemy an idle affair, and they pride themselves only on the rank and the rations they enjoy. Who among them is willing to go first in person? Now you are the first to raise the cry of righteousness and lead keen troops yourself, giving rein to the spirit of a great man and matching the pointing hand of the prime minister. Still more, I know that you have long stored up craft and design and have long carried out drill. If I wait for you to unfold your valiant conduct, you will surely set up an extraordinary achievement. When you set out from your home district, the fragrant name of a far land alone will ring out. When the emperor's carriage returns to the palace, the changes on your road ahead will be hard to measure. For a while there will be hardship and toil. Take good care of yourself. Now I send along cloth, silver vessels, tea, and medicine. When they arrive, examine them and receive them. In the cold of spring be careful on the journey, and give your officers and men twice the comfort. I send this in haste and cannot set it all out, and so on.