Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 16 — Funerary Texts

Text for the sacrifice to the god of the soil at the building of the Yangma Wall築羊馬城祭土地文

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 · 209 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 16 — Funerary 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.

1Do not refuse the din of the rammers; bring about the firmness of metal and moat

年月日。具銜某以兵戎未息。禦備是勤。乃命修築羊馬城。遂遣某官某乙告于土地之神曰。夫城郭之設。邑居所憑。陋之則狡者或窺。美之則寡能固守。況今豺聲競發。虺毒遍吹。易動難安。何處能爲樂境。暫勞永泰。此時須建良功。遂乃揣高卑議遠近。便令百堵皆作。終可三旬而成。徵名於伏櫪觸楹。接勢於長雲斷岸。不假龜行之跡。豈須龍見之期。衆旣叶心。事無費力。神其德惟博載。道實流謙。勿辭板築之喧。勉致金湯之固。使雲鍬雷杵。遠振歡聲。烏堞隼墉。高標壯觀。北呑淮月。南吸江煙。平欺鐵甕之名。迥壓金甌之記。有備無患。神其聽之。

Year, month, day. So-and-so, with his titles set out, since the fighting is not yet at an end, is diligent in defense. He has therefore ordered the Yangma Wall to be built up, and now sends so-and-so of such-and-such office to announce to the god of the soil, saying: The setting up of walls is what those who dwell in a town lean on. If they are mean, the crafty may spy them out; if they are fine, few can hold them firm. Still more now, when the cry of jackals rises in contention and the venom of the adder blows everywhere. It is easy to be stirred and hard to be at peace, and what place could be a happy ground? To labor a short while for lasting ease, at this hour a good work must be raised. So the heights and hollows were measured and the far and the near debated, and a hundred walls were all set building, to be finished in thirty days. Its name is drawn from the lying at the manger and the striking against the pillar; its line is joined to the long clouds and the broken bluff. It does not borrow the track of the tortoise's walking; why should it wait for the season when the dragon appears? The many are already of one heart, and the work costs no strength. The god's virtue is only to bear all things broadly, and his way truly flows into humility. Do not refuse the din of board and rammer, but strive to bring about the firmness of a wall of metal and a moat of boiling water. Let spades like clouds and pestles like thunder shake out a glad sound far off, and let the crow-dark battlements and the falcon walls mark a grand sight on high. To the north let them swallow the moon on the Huai, and to the south drink in the mist of the Jiang, so that level they make light of the name of the Iron Jar and far off they press down the record of the Golden Bowl. With preparation there is no trouble. May the god hear this.

Interlinear notes 1

烏 is taken as "black" and 隼 as "sheer as a falcon." Both may also be read as the names of birds. — translator

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