Dispatch appointing Hao Ding military commandant of the headquarters staff郝定補衙前兵馬使
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 · 126 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 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 bow of three hundred catties, an arrow of seventy paces
This dispatch carries out the decision handed down. The advantage of bow and arrow is what comes first in the martial arts. One may make the gibbons cry out and spread a fine name forever, or bring down the wild goose and hand on a marvelous skill. How much more when a man can draw six jun with five fingers alone. This is not merely to pass the ancients and surpass the present. It may be called a divine feat and a sage's art. The officer named above worked at shooting from the hand early and answers well to the workings of his mind. He can draw a bow of three hundred catties without fail, and can loose an arrow seventy paces. If Ji Chang saw him, he would surely think of putting away his bowstring. If Lü Bu met him, he would truly be ashamed to pinch the nock. Since he holds a skill out of the common run, let us wait for him to bring about a merit that can last. He exchanges his old standing at Huatai and climbs to a high grade in the Sui park. This matter must be an appointment as military commandant of the headquarters staff.