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

Dispatch putting Zhuge Yin in charge of the liquor monopoly office諸葛殷知榷酒務

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 · 134 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 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.

1Let the profit of the liquor monopoly keep the army full

牒奉處分。榷酤之權。起於漢代。會計之利。著在周經。旣當預備闕懸。難可不從改作。將成重務。固選良才。前件官。隱豹含章。臥龍襲慶。潔己則隋珠無纇。在公則庖刃有餘。昨分孔僅之重司。已成歷試。今躡魯匡之良策。何憚專勤。無辭鄭驛之卑棲。早致卓壚之餘利。能資美祿。必贍雄師。所期百姓無譁。非阻三軍告醉。事須差攝館驛巡官。專知榷酒務。

This dispatch carries out the decision handed down. The power of the liquor monopoly arose in the age of Han, and the profit of accounting stands written in the classics of Zhou. Since what is lacking and overdue must be provided for in advance, there is no choice but to follow a reform. To bring so weighty a business about, a good man must truly be chosen. The officer named above is the hidden leopard that holds its pattern within, the crouching dragon that inherits blessing. Keeping himself clean, he is a pearl of the Marquis of Sui without a flaw. Standing in public service, his blade has room to spare as the cook's blade had. Lately he shared the heavy office of Kong Jin and has already been tried in every task. Now he treads the good plan of Lu Kuang, so why should he shrink from single-minded diligence? Let him not refuse a low perch at the Zheng post station, and let him soon bring in the profit left over at Zhuo's wine shop. If that gift of heaven, wine, can furnish the means, it will surely keep a mighty army full. What is looked for is that the people raise no outcry, not that the three armies be kept from reporting themselves drunk. This matter must be a dispatch making him acting post station inspector, with sole charge of the liquor monopoly office.

Interlinear notes 1

The phrase comes from the History of the Han, which calls wine "the fine emolument of Heaven." — translator