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 · 144 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 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.
I submit this. I have respectfully received your kindness. You have granted me ten bolts of summer cloth (生衣). I bow and consider: though the wind may loosen men's resentment, the sun's power is to be feared. Just as the steaming, close season comes on, I have undeservedly received a gift of fresh and lovely stuff. I would dare to copy the companions of the Eight Dukes and show off a six-zhu garment. Yet I only follow the people's gladness and join in singing of the Five Trousers (五袴). Still more, I have been fortunate enough to hurry to your high steps and to lodge in honor at a gate of virtue. I truly draw on a meeting that comes once in a thousand years, and my clothing for all four seasons is provided every time. You pity me with a feeling beyond that of father and mother, and praise me with a courtesy unlike that shown to guests and colleagues. Now, with light gauze for a shirt and fine tabby for an overrobe, you let me hurry to the black tent and allow me to trail the skirts of Zou Yan. Your favor lights up a man from far away, and it is enough to show its beauty in the halls of the sea-weavers. But my name falls short of a man of rare gifts, and I gladly bring on myself the reproach of the pelican on the weir. My humble heart cannot bear the fullness of its gratitude.