Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 13 — Notices

Dispatch asking that Grand Master Li, the deputy commissioner, take charge as acting head請副使李大夫知留後

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 · 196 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 13 — Notices 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.

1Going out to campaign, and leaving what remains in his hands

牒大夫。劍橫天外。珠媚水中。雄稜則仰決浮雲。溫潤則旁旁無枯草。深藏利器。久佐遠藩。每施婉婉之謀。共化蚩蚩之俗。五鎭相倚。一紀于玆。嘗於折獄按刑。唯遵直道。縱至旬休節暇。不離公門。敢言知己之難。實荷成人之美。今已三年翫寇。尙恣侜張。十道徵師。遞相逼撓。若不專征鈇鉞。何因倒載干戈。遂驅養勇之鋒。佇破稔奸之窟。代行拙政。留託長才。慰八郡之疲羸。察四隣之劻勷。冀使袁宏黎庶粗識詠歌。無令陶侃賓僚只耽閑戲。數年臥理。今日出行。皆資裨助之功。聿保始終之惠。事須請知觀察留後。

A dispatch to the grand master. A sword lies across the sky beyond; a pearl shines lovely in the water. In his bold edge he looks up and cuts the drifting clouds. In his warmth and smoothness no withered grass lies near him. He keeps a sharp weapon deep in its sheath and has long aided a far frontier. Always he has offered gentle plans, and together we have changed the ways of an ignorant land. Five garrisons have leaned on one another, and twelve years have passed. In judging cases and weighing punishments he has followed only the straight road, and even on his ten-day rest and the holidays he did not leave the office gate. I dare speak of how hard it is to find one who knows me, for truly I have received from him the making of what is good in a man. Now for three years the bandits have been trifled with, and still they are free with their deceits. Troops have been called up from the ten circuits, yet each presses and hinders the other. Without the axe of a sole command to campaign, how shall the weapons ever be stowed away for good? So I shall drive on blades that have been trained to courage, and wait to break the den where evil has ripened. My clumsy government is to be carried on in my place, and a man of outstanding talent is left in charge, to comfort the worn people of eight commanderies and to watch the disorder of the four neighbors. Let the common folk of Yuan Hong come to know something of song, and do not let the staff of Tao Kan think only of idle games. For some years he governed lying down; today he goes out on campaign. All of it rests on the merit of his help, and so the grace of the beginning and of the end is kept whole. This matter must be a request that he take charge as acting head of the surveillance office.

‹ Dispatch asking that Junior Steward Gao Yanxiu be made inspector of the salt and iron office Contents Dispatch asking that Grand Master Li Guan, administrative assistant of the commission, be made deputy commissioner ›Listen to this piece