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

Dispatch appointing a man of the surrendered army military commandant of the headquarters staff歸順軍補衙前兵馬使

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 · 94 Chinese characters · reading time 0.4 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 man who stirred his heart at the beating of the drums

牒奉處分。前件官。身榮豹飾。志習龍韜。奮心於擊鼓其鏜。騁力於挾輈以走。早歸信義。無憚勤勞。去正寇據屬城。兵徵諸郡。共諫微孼。各誓前驅。旣遵令於牙璋。宜陟名於甲騎。聊遷職秩。用報軍功。爾其勿替忠誠。更邀上賞。事須補充衙前兵馬使。

This dispatch carries out the decision handed down. The officer named above has a body made glorious by the leopard trim, and a will trained in the arts of war. He stirred his heart at the beating of the drums, and sped his strength at running with the shaft under his arm. Early on he turned back to good faith, and he never shrank from hard toil. Lately, when the bandits held the subject towns and troops were levied from the several commanderies, he joined in striking the petty brood and swore with the rest to go in front. Since he has already followed the order of the jade tally, his name should rightly be raised on the roll of the armored horse. So his rank is moved up, in requital of his merit in the field. Do not change your loyalty, and meet a higher reward again. This matter must be an appointment as military commandant of the headquarters staff.

Interlinear notes 1

The base text has 諫, "to admonish," and is so rendered. In light of gp-218, where 剗 is rendered "to cut down," it may be an error for 剗. — translator