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

Dispatch putting Liu Xiaoqian in charge of the liquor monopoly office of the Baisha market柳孝謙知白沙場榷酒務

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 · 81 Chinese characters · reading time 0.3 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 cheat with the brewing vessels, and do not sink into the land of drink

牒奉處分。前件官。直道立身。公途勵志。學已窺室家之富。任曾致州縣之勞。今以備食三行。搜資六物。豈使弊歸於下。只令利在其中。勉稟條章。早申績效。俾不欺於釀具。無自陷於醉鄕。事須差知白沙場榷酒務。

This dispatch carries out the decision handed down. The officer named above stands on the straight way, and has set his will on the public road. His learning has already looked into the riches of a household, and his service has long borne the labor of prefecture and county. Now food for the three ranks is to be made ready, and goods for the six articles are to be sought. How should the harm be let fall on those below? Only let the profit lie within the work. Strive to take the rules to heart and show your record early. Do not cheat with the brewing vessels, and do not let yourself sink into the land of drink. This matter must be sent as a charge of the liquor monopoly office of the Baisha market.

Interlinear notes 1

三行 is taken as the three ranks of the army, as in gp-212, and 六物 as the six materials for brewing. They can also be read as three rounds of drink and various supplies. — translator