Dispatch making Song Zaixiong chief military commandant of the navy宋再雄差充水軍都知兵馬使
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 · 169 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 14 — 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.
1Cut down the water dragons on the water, and kill the snakes and boars on land
This dispatch carries out the decision handed down. Boats and oars work their advantage, and halberd and shield ride out in awe. From of old this has been the hard thing, and now it is the urgent one. Only by trusting to a strategy that ranges where it will can the work of shielding the land be brought about. The officer named above learned the sword and mastered it, and allowed himself the drawing of the bow. Eating pork he showed his mettle in his day. Dragging an ox he contended for the first place wherever he went. He was set high in the ranks of the army gate and followed the road of duty deeply. Long stationed at the river garrisons, he has drilled the naval forces to a fine edge. Now disaster flows down the banks of the Si, and bandits gather within the Huai. They have already broken into the borders where the customs are watched, and they have much darkened the stream on which the moon shines. Do you take the whole bold soldiery into your grasp, and spread your secret plans far. On land wipe out the snakes and boars. On the water cut off the water dragons. Let the forts of the bandits all be leveled early, and let no startling wave rise ever again. To use the goods of the government and strike the bandits of the government — this I do not count hard. But to feel out the tiger's den and pull out the tiger's cub, in this you must spur yourself on. This matter must be sent as an appointment to the post of chief military commandant of the navy, to lead the several forces of horse and foot and put down the bandit host within the Huai.