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 · 156 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 19 — Miscellaneous 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.
1When I see the people at peace, I know the joy of the three armies
I humbly consider that in these days custom prizes the titles of writings and words boast of praise and blessing. Unless the virtue is whole, such words are mostly shameful. My nature is close to foolish and I hold myself upright. What my eyes have seen and my ears have heard, that alone I dare to sing, and there is truly no flattering smile in it. Since I came into this benevolent region it has been as though I returned to my old village. When I see the people at peace, I know the joy of the three armies. When I see the villages at ease, I know the order of the commandery and the county. If you, Attendant, had not made leniency and sternness rescue each other and had not carried kindness and awe together, how would it have come to this, that in the dwellings of the hamlets house congratulates house, and from near to far they are merry with delight at meeting a kind father? That being so, your governance is complete in one region and your name has reached the ninefold palace. I reckon that soon the rich sable will rise on your cap and your banner will turn to raise the falcon, that you will gloriously receive a true appointment and greatly satisfy the feelings of the multitude. Whenever I hear the songs, I deepen my prayer and blessing. I humbly beg you to look and consider. Respectfully submitted.