Letter of thanks for the loan of the record of the Heavenly Kings of Fayun Temple謝借示法雲寺天王記狀
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 · 147 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. Yesterday I humbly received your kindness, and you lent me the stele of the Heavenly Kings of Fayun Temple, which had been repaired, and let me see it. I looked a moment at the colored brush, and my vulgar eyes woke for the first time. I am ashamed only that, being of the common sort who cut iron seals, I suddenly beheld the fine traces of a silver hook. It has already become a treasure of the state. How should it be allowed to be hidden away in a private house? I hear in private that you were about to have the upright stele cut by command, and that you first wielded your divine brush; that the wind pavilion lessened the heat, and the wine of heaven offered up a good omen. I know surely that traces of hanging dew become sweet dew itself, and still more that, borrowing the force of tumbling clouds, they will light the cloud of the Law forever. It is fitting that words on fine jade should hold down that ground of lapis, that they should carry the fair omen on together and shake out their fragrant sound far off. That being so, the old capital of Emperor Yang of Sui will be a cave of treasure forever, and the old house of General Xie will become a field of blessing at last. My humble heart cannot bear the fullness of the honor and the dread with which I hold this up, read it, and pray. The stele I respectfully return by a messenger of my own. Respectfully submitted.