景福遐敷 May Great Blessing Spread Far
逐句解 Line by line
Now may these scriptures be handed on and spread abroad, and be endless alongside the sun and moon;
⚠ 方冀 — now I hope. After eighty lines of assertion the document ends in the optative, which is where a preface should end: not with a claim but with a wish. 並日月而無窮 — endless together with the sun and moon. It is the standard formula for a thing meant to outlast everything, and Monkey used a version of it two chapters ago about what the scriptures could do for a man who owned them.
may great blessing be spread far, and be forever vast along with heaven and earth!
⚠ 乾坤 — heaven and earth. Its first character is read qián here, the sky-principle: the first of the eight three-line figures of the Book of Changes. Twelve lines ago the same graph was gān, parching, in a line about flames. ⚠ And look where the preface ends. It opened on the Two Modes and the Four Seasons, in the vocabulary of the Chinese classics, before the Buddha was mentioned. It closes on heaven and earth, in the same vocabulary. The Buddhism is in the middle; the frame at both ends is Confucian. 也歟 is a pair of classical exclamations stacked up, and it is the only place the emperor lets himself be heard raising his voice.
The document ends the way a preface should: not with a claim but with a wish. May these scriptures be handed on, endless alongside the sun and moon; may great blessing spread far and be vast forever, along with heaven and earth.
⚠ And look at the frame. It opened on the Two Modes and the Four Seasons, in the vocabulary of the Chinese classics, and took twenty-two lines to reach the Buddha at all. It closes on heaven and earth, in that same vocabulary. The Buddhism sits in the middle; both ends are Confucian, and the emperor never once steps outside his own tradition to praise a foreign one.
The last two characters are a pair of classical exclamations stacked on top of each other — the only place in eighty lines where he lets himself be heard raising his voice.