To Gao Ba of the Hailing garrison — to one moved to Cavalier Attendant of the Right海陵鎭高霸
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 · 103 Chinese characters · reading time 0.4 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 Gao Ba. I have had the report of the Bureau of Memorials and learn that you have been moved and given the post of Cavalier Attendant of the Right. My gladness and content are lasting and fill my heart. In old days Zhou Panlong had merit in breaking the barbarians and was steeped in rank and reward one after another. Shizu of Qi teased him, saying, "You wear the sable cap. How does it compare with a helmet?" He answered, "This sable cap came out of a helmet." At the time it was held a famous reply, and the earlier histories set it down as a fine story. Now the glory of this office truly shows the ruler's favor. It rests only in your being wholly diligent in guarding and blocking the frontier and in holding the border fast. Wait for greater things to come, and raise your loyal conduct high forever. Know this.