Dispatch for the chief provost of the field headquarters行營都虞候
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 · 76 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.
1Watch the ranks, and guard against trouble beyond the border
This dispatch carries out the decision handed down. The officer named above is brave and yet loves propriety. He is quick, and so he gets things done. His bodily strength is very great, and he may be trusted with what is closest and most secret. Now the strong soldiers are to be driven forward together, that the crowd of villains may be cut away. Search out and mark what passes in the ranks, and guard against trouble beyond the border. Hold to the small points of conduct, and serve your superiors well. Do not call it loyalty when it goes against harmony. If you can bring about a diligent record, no reward for merit will be grudged. This matter must be an appointment as chief provost of the field headquarters.