Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 15 — Prayer Texts

Prayer for the Yellow Register fast at the first prime上元黃籙齋詞

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 · 210 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 15 — Prayer Texts 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.

1Between the chopsticks of Zhang Liang and the small boat of Fan Li

年月朔。啓請如科儀。伏以有德不德。無名可名。自施儵忽之功。莫究希微之旨。是以。紫府乃修心可到。玄關非用力能開。臣志慕眞風。躬行正道。但以漢良前筯。猶勞戰伐之謀。越蠡扁舟。未遂優閒之望。旣榮人爵。須報主恩。誓殲無賴之徒。久練不祥之器。動拘俗役。慮犯玄科。今則節已及於上元。災未銷於下界。謹修常醮。仰貢微誠。所願梟覆頑巢。鳳廻仙駕。帝座與三台永耀。王畿與九牧皆安。雷驚而蟄戶全開。風掃而妖氛靜息。俾臣靈根日茂。至業天成。虎符提閫外之權。終安澤國。虹節指壺中之境。得認家山。臣無任虔肅禱祠懇悃之至。謹辭。

Such a year, such a month, the first day. The opening petition is as the ritual code prescribes. I bow and consider that he has virtue and does not call it virtue, and that he has no name and yet a name may be given. Of itself it works the merit of the swift and the sudden, and none can search out the meaning of the rare and the faint. So the Purple Bureau is reached only by cultivating the mind, and the dark gate cannot be opened by force. Your servant longs in his will for the true wind, and walks the straight way in his own person. But with the chopsticks that Zhang Liang of Han held before him, he still toils at plans for war, and with the small boat of Fan Li of Yue he has not yet won his wish for ease. Since he is honored with rank among men, he must repay his lord's kindness. He has sworn to wipe out the lawless crowd, and he has long drilled with the tools of ill omen. His every move is bound to common service, and he fears that he breaks the dark code. Now the season has already come to the first prime, but the calamity has not melted away in the lower world. Reverently he keeps the regular offering, and looks up to present his small sincerity. What he wishes is that the owls' stubborn nest be overturned, and that the phoenix bring the immortal carriage back. Let the Emperor's Seat and the Three Terraces shine forever. Let the royal domain and the nine provinces all be at peace. Let thunder startle, and every door of hibernation open. Let the wind sweep, and the baleful vapors sink quietly to rest. Let your servant's numinous root grow lush day by day, and let his highest work be completed by heaven. With the tiger tally he holds authority beyond the gate. Let him bring peace at last to the land of marshes. With the rainbow staff he points to the realm within the gourd. Let him come to know the hills of his home. Your servant cannot bear the fullness of his reverent and solemn prayer and his earnest heart. This he submits with respect.

Interlinear notes 1

梟 is taken in its sense of beheading and hanging up the head. Paired with the phoenix of the next clause, it can also be read as the owl. — translator

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