取經人來了 The Scripture-Seekers Are Here
真個是：真个是：
唐僧四眾隨駕入朝，滿城中無一不知是取經人來了。唐僧四众随驾入朝，满城中无一不知是取经人来了。
逐句解 Line by line
Truly it was:
The cue for a set piece — one of the seven this chapter uses, and no two are the same. What follows is the chapter's first indented verse.
In that year, at the pure feast, they took joy in a rising peace; civil and military stood untroubled and showed their best men.
⚠ 當年 — in that year, meaning the year the journey began. The poem opens by looking backwards, which is the whole point of putting it here. 樂昇平, to delight in a time of peace and prosperity. The middle character is read lè, joy — not yuè, music, which is the reading it takes in words like drums and music. 文武, the civil and the military — the two halves of any Chinese court, and the standard way of saying everybody who mattered.
In the Water-and-Land arena the monks expounded the law; in the golden hall the sovereign dispatched his minister.
⚠ 水陸場 is the ground cleared for the Mass of Water and Land, the great rite for the drowned and the unburied that opens chapter twelve — the ceremony at which the Tang monk was chosen. Its last character is read cháng. The dictionaries record only that reading for this graph and gloss it as the cleared ground for offering to spirits, and name the Buddhist ordination arena as the same word. The rising tone most readers expect is in none of them. ⚠ 主差卿 — the sovereign dispatched his minister. 差 is read chāi, to send on a commission, and the metre proves it: at this position in a seven-character line the tone is fixed, and only the level reading lets the line scan. Two lines, two halves of one event: the monks make the ceremony, the emperor makes the appointment.
Imperial decree granted the travel rescript to Tang Sanzang; the scripture-scrolls matched the Five Phases from the first.
⚠ 關文 is the travel rescript, the document every kingdom on the road had to stamp. It is about to reappear in the emperor's hands, covered in seals. 敕賜 — granted by imperial decree. The journey was authorised paperwork before it was anything else. ⚠ 配五行, matched with the Five Phases — wood, fire, earth, metal and water, the Chinese scheme for how everything is composed. The poem is claiming that the scriptures and the pilgrims were fitted to each other by the structure of the world, and it does it in three characters, in passing.
Refined through bitterness, the fierce fiends were destroyed one kind after another; the work done, today he goes gladly up to the capital.
⚠ 苦煉 is a furnace word — to refine by heat and hammering — and the Daoist alchemists use it for what the adept does to himself. Ninety chapters of demons summed up as smelting. 種種滅, kind after kind destroyed. The poem does not name a single fiend. ⚠ 功成, the work accomplished, is half the phrase the villagers used last chapter and half the emperor's own about to come. And 上朝京 — up to the capital, to court. The last word of the poem is not the Buddha. It is the office he has to report to.
The Tang monk and his three followed the imperial train in to court, and there was not one soul in the whole city who did not know that the scripture-seekers had come.
⚠ 無一不知 — not one who did not know. The news is through Chang'an before the procession reaches the palace. And notice what the city knows them as: 取經人, the scripture-fetchers. Not saints, not buddhas — the men who went to get the books. The capital has been waiting fourteen years for a delivery and it knows exactly what has arrived.
Eight lines of verse for a homecoming, and every one of them looks backwards. The feast of that year, the Water-and-Land rite, the rescript granted by decree, the fiends smelted away kind by kind — the poem is a summary of the whole book, delivered in the past tense while the men it describes are still walking into the city.
⚠ It also puts the journey's origin exactly where the novel put it: a ceremony and a piece of paper. The monks made the rite, the emperor made the appointment, the rescript was granted. Nothing in the first half of this poem is miraculous.
⚠ And the last thing it says is where he is going. Not to the Buddha, not to heaven — up to the capital, to court. The poem that sums up the pilgrimage ends on the office he has to report to, which is what the rest of the chapter is about.
Then the city finds out, all of it, before the procession has arrived. What Chang'an knows is that the scripture-fetchers are back. They have been waiting for the parcel.