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 · 114 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 16 — Letters 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.
Though wind and mist are near, the clouds and fog are hard to part, and so, looking up to your numinous power, I unfold my sincere prayer from afar. A fine site has now been quietly sought out and a hall of long life raised high, where you may dwell in peace forever, and I respectfully send to ask you and welcome you. I beg you to bring your household and come quickly, and I shall sweep the mat myself and meet you. Besides, the wall of Tieweng is low and the ground of Jinling is narrow. You who can bestow a hundred blessings, do not linger in one quarter. Here we would brush the baleful star with the sword and greet the sage sun with the banner, surely looking for a great victory and bringing about a lasting restoration. Be pleased to come and help with soldiers of the unseen, and together bring the king's business to pass. My eyes reach the end of the snow-white waves flowing east, and my heart runs to the misty peak that looks north. Spirit, move hither, grieve for Jiangnan. So-and-so states this.