Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 19 — Reports and Enclosures

Separate letter to the Director of the Bureau of Treasury與金部郎中別紙

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 · 102 Chinese characters · reading time 0.4 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 19 — Reports and Enclosures 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.

1Bright and also wise: the Book of Songs praises the worthy man

不審近日。尊體寢膳何似。旣明且哲則詩美賢人。視履考祥則易稱君子。旣樂持盈之道。固安養素之機。況屬遲日載陽。光風遍煦。燕歌鶯舞。深資酌桂之歡。智水仁山。靜悅據梧之興。伏惟永資景福。早副急徵。擲玄賞於煙霞。濟蒼生於塗炭。群情禱望。天下幸甚。謹狀。

I do not know how your honored body has been of late in sleep and in food. "Bright and also wise" — so the Book of Songs praises a worthy man. "He looks at what he has trodden and examines the omens" — so the Book of Changes speaks of the gentleman. You already delight in the way that holds a full vessel, and you rest secure on the ground that nourishes what is plain. Still more, the slow days now carry warmth and a shining wind is mild everywhere. Swallows sing and orioles dance, and this deepens the joy of pouring cassia wine. Water for the wise and mountains for the benevolent quietly gladden the pleasure of leaning on the paulownia. I humbly trust that you will rest forever on great blessings and will soon answer an urgent summons, that you will cast aside the quiet joys of mist and haze and save the living people out of mire and coals. The feelings of the many pray and look for it. It would be great good fortune for all under heaven. Respectfully submitted.