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

Dispatch appointing Chai Yan inspector of the Hongze rain ponds — the agricultural colony of Chuzhou柴嚴充洪澤雨塘巡官楚州營田

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 · 131 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.

1Watch the veins of the water, and the grain will stand like cloud

牒奉處分。三農就稔。一漑推功。苟非權降雨之渠。何以致如雲之稼。俾無隳惰。固藉專勤。前件官。壯志不渝。公才可任。承乏而善參軍事。愼終而益見吏能。今以洪澤近封。雨塘美號。徵小喩大。昇高自卑。爾其靜勖氷心。潛窺水脈。勉稟龔黃之令。遠繼田曹。無慙鄭白之名。有虧地利。高懸賞罰。用試否臧。事須差充楚州營田院洪澤雨塘專知官。

This dispatch carries out the decision handed down. When the three kinds of farming ripen, the credit goes to a single watering. Without power over the channel that brings down rain, how could a harvest like cloud be raised? To let no one fall slack, the work leans truly on single-minded diligence. The officer named above holds a stout will that does not change, and has public ability fit to be charged. He filled a vacancy and took good part in the affairs of the army. He was careful to the end, and his skill as an official showed all the more. Now Hongze lies in a near domain, and the rain ponds bear a fine name. From the small a great thing is drawn, and one climbs high from low ground. Quietly strive at a heart of ice, and secretly watch the veins of the water. Strive to follow the orders of Gong Sui and Huang Ba, and carry on the farm office from afar. Bring no shame on the names of Zheng Guo and Bai Gong by letting the profit of the land fall short. Reward and punishment hang high, to try what is good and what is not. This matter must be an appointment as the officer in sole charge of the Hongze rain ponds in the agricultural colony office of Chuzhou.