Dispatch making An Zairong chief commander of the field headquarters安再榮充行營都指揮使
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 · 181 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.
1The old thoroughbred lies in his stall, yet his will is on a thousand li
This dispatch carries out the decision handed down. Long ago Lord Cao made a ballad and sang, "The old thoroughbred lies in his stall, yet his will is on a thousand li. The brave man in his evening years keeps a stout heart that does not stop." Today is as it was then, and I have found my man. The officer named above won his merit in a hundred battles, and went out with a single wave of the banner to hold his post. He once brought peace to the ways of the coast, and shook out a lasting fame. He did not ask for it, yet he grasps the tiger tally again, wishing only to unfold the arts of war to the end. How should he notice that old age is coming on? He has always waited to act when he was used. Now the great villain is not yet wiped out, and the outer regions have many troubles. When the several provinces appoint their generals, it is always a groping for a name among the bamboo slips. When troops are levied from a far road, it may be the keeping of faith at Kuiqiu. If loyalty and courage fail, what will wash away this vile and wicked crew? So a heavy authority is handed to him, and we wait to see his rare plan. It rests with him to go before the ranks in person, and to point the way for his troops. Strive to raise high the name of the hale old man, and let there be no service that drags and delays. The hour must not be lost. Go, and be reverent. This matter must be sent as an appointment to the post of chief commander of the field headquarters, going to the western side of Shouzhou to make ready its defense and to attack and drive out the party of Huang Chao.