A letter congratulating Gao, the administrative aide, on his appointment賀高司馬除官狀
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 · 170 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 18 — Letters and Reports 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.
1The promotion of Gao, the administrative aide, the twenty-fifth young master
I submit this. I respectfully learn that the administrative aide, the twenty-fifth young master, has gloriously received a favored command, and I bow and offer my glad congratulations. I bow and consider: the fine offices of the Han court are praised for the honor of the Grand Tutor and the Junior Tutor, and the high current of the Jin age boasted of the fame of the elder Ruan and the younger Ruan. Yet they wished only to free themselves from profit and salary, and there was none who did not give his will over to song and chanting. As subjects they marred the sincerity that repays a ruler. As sons they lost the duty of bringing honor to their parents. How could anyone have expected that His Excellency the Grand Commandant would speak a weighty word to which heaven answered, and send a fair command abroad like the wind, so that the administrative aide, the twenty-fifth young master, should now put on the colored robe and gird on a vermilion seal-cord? He has stirred the glad color in the faces of his high hall, and shaken out the fair renown of a house of virtue. With much leisure in assisting the government, the lingering fragrance of the jade tree lies thick about him. Alone honored in a line of officeholders, he outshines the worthies of old in the bamboo grove. I am always ashamed that so small a scholar undeservedly nests in this great house. I watch the soaring force of the great Peng bird, and store up the glad heart of a swallow or a sparrow. My humble heart cannot bear the fullness of its clapping and leaping. I respectfully present this letter to set out my congratulations. Respectfully set out.