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

Dispatch for the commander of the Xiezhi corps獬豸都將

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 · 143 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.

1Do not lose the nature of the divine ram that butts the crooked

牒奉處分。凡標軍額。須警衆心。如指喩之非宜。則訓齊而何在。況乃均霑好爵。共荷殊恩。跡雖限於柳營。秩盡昇於柏署。宜加一等。俾異三行。前件官。壯氣挺生。忠誠卓立。彍弩則前無強敵。荷戈則動有成功。累建戎勳。遂霑爵賞。今以狼星未滅。鯨浪猶翻。將申戮暴之能。用示觸邪之號。爾其勉思一角。永息二心。佇銷封豕之災。勿失神羊之性。事須補充獬豸軍都知兵馬使。

This dispatch carries out the decision handed down. Whenever a unit is given its name, the hearts of the men must be put on guard. If the figure it points to is not fitting, where then is the drill that makes them one? Still more so when all alike are wetted with good rank and share in a special favor. Their tracks are held within the willow camp, yet their grades have all risen to the cypress office. One degree should be added, to set him apart from the three ranks. The officer named above was born with a brave spirit standing tall, and his loyalty stands out above the rest. When he draws the crossbow, no strong enemy stands before him. When he shoulders the spear, his every move brings success. He has built up merit in the field again and again, and so has been wetted with rank and reward. Now the Wolf Star is not yet put out, and the whale waves still turn over. To stretch out the power that slays the cruel, the title of butting the crooked is shown to him. Strive to keep the single horn in mind, and put away for good any second heart. Wait for the plague of the great boar to melt away, and do not lose the nature of the divine ram. This matter must be an appointment as chief military commandant of the Xiezhi army.