Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 20 — Reports to the Throne

A memorial thanking him for the money bestowed on my younger cousin Seowon謝賜弟棲遠錢狀

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 · 149 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min

Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 20 — Reports to the Throne 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.

1My cousin Choe Seowon barely kept his life from the wind and waves

某啓。某堂弟棲遠比將家信。迎接東歸。遂假新羅國入淮海使錄事職名。獲詣雄藩。將歸故國。昨者伏蒙仁恩特賜錢三十貫者。伏以崔棲遠遠涉煙波。大遭風浪。僅存微命。唯有空身。雖志切鶺鴒。竊慕在原之義。而譽慙騏驥。難期得路之秋。銜蘆而但喜聯行。泛梗而免虞失所。今者某已榮奉使。則遂寧親。貨泉沾潤之名。實稱子母。歸路光榮之事。皆屬善人。下情無任感恩欣躍兢惕之至。

I submit this. My cousin Seowon lately brought word from home and came to meet me for the return to the east. He borrowed the title of recorder to the Silla envoy entering Huaihai, and so was able to reach this mighty province, and he is about to go back to his own country. The other day I humbly received your benevolent kindness, which bestowed on him thirty strings of cash. I humbly consider that Choe Seowon crossed the misty waves far off and met great wind and waves, so that he barely kept his slight life and had nothing but an empty body. His will is keen as the wagtail's and he quietly admires the duty of the brothers in the meadow, yet his repute is shamed before fine steeds and it is hard to look for the season when he will find his road. Holding a reed in his beak, he is glad only to go in company; drifting like a broken stick, he is spared the fear of losing his place. Now I have already taken up an envoy's charge in glory and so I fulfill the setting of my parents at ease. The name of the coin called Wealth Spring (貨泉), which soaks all with richness, truly fits the mother and child coin (子母), and the glorious things of the homeward road all belong to good men. My humble heart cannot bear the fullness of its gratitude for kindness, its leaping joy and its awe.