To Dai Lu — thirteen merits in guarding his county for six years戴盧
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 · 142 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 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 Dai Lu. On the day Minister Pei, Director of the Palace Administration, passed through that county, he received a letter from the common people, the monks, and the Daoists. It sets out and speaks for thirteen achievements of yours from the fifth year of Qianfu, when you took charge of the garrison and held the county business as well. Every matter in it is gathered from the facts, and the feeling in it is earnest in commending an able man. Its words and its reasoning are bright, and truly my comfort and content are increased. You have spent all your sincerity in repaying the state and have poured out your property and forgotten your household. You have gathered a righteous army and drilled your kinsmen into order. You have soothed the thin and the sick into peace and have caught and struck at raiders. For six years now one town has leaned upon you. You have merit and do not boast of it, and you follow only what is good. So you came to hold the county office and to give your home district lasting peace. In old days a field was called Life-Lengthening and a town was named Righteousness Arisen. Seek those things in you, and they are not too much to say. My praise is already increased, and I shall not forget to recommend you and speak for you. Strive to keep your loyalty whole, and in the end you will meet a fair command. Know it all.
Interlinear notes 1
"Field of Prolonged Life" and "County of Righteous Flourishing" were names given to a field and a county in praise of former magistrates who had saved the people. — translator