Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 14 — Notices

Dispatch granting Xu Qing the post of prefect of Luzhou許勍授廬州刺史

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 · 138 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 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.

1A town with no barking dogs, a border where the flying locusts have ceased

牒奉處分。良二千石。古難其人。屬郡之中。吾有所試。勤修靜理。今得人焉。前件官。自擧六條。已踰四載。邑無吠犬。境絶飛蝗。外令丘井乂安。內致閨門肅睦。政聲則有口者歌詠。仁譽則無翼而奮飛。遠達宸聰。果霑殊寵。美秩已題於龍劍。雄威愈振於隼旟。旣銷滁水之災。來作廬江之福。分憂救瘼。能諧聖主之心。紅旆碧幢。豈落他人之手。事須准勑授廬州刺史。

This dispatch carries out the decision handed down. A good officer of two thousand bushels has been hard to find since ancient times. Among the commanderies under this command I have made trial, and now I have found the man who has diligently cultivated a quiet rule. The officer named above has held up the six articles himself for more than four years now. In his towns there are no barking dogs. At his borders the flying locusts have ceased. Abroad he has brought peace to hamlet and well. At home he has brought a grave concord to the inner gates. The fame of his government is sung by everyone who has a mouth, and the praise of his benevolence has flown up and spread without wings. It has reached the ear of the throne far off, and indeed it has been bathed in a rare favor. A fine rank is already written on the dragon sword, and a bold authority is shaken out still more on the falcon banner. He has already dispelled the disaster of the river at Chuzhou, and now he comes to be the good fortune of Lujiang. He can share the cares of the throne and heal its ills, and so meet the heart of the sage ruler. How should the red pennon and the green banner fall into another man's hands? This matter must be, in accord with the edict, the granting of the post of prefect of Luzhou.