頌降西經 The Gatha of the Western Scriptures
頌曰：颂曰：
逐句解 Line by line
The gatha said:
頌曰 heads the verse dropped out of the sky. A 頌 is a Buddhist verse of praise or proclamation, the Chinese rendering of the Sanskrit gāthā.
In homage to the lord of Great Tang: in the West there is a wondrous text.
The gatha salutes the emperor before it says anything else, 禮上大唐君, and then states the errand of the entire novel in five characters: 西方有妙文.
The road is a hundred and eight thousand li; the Greater Vehicle advances with earnest zeal.
十萬八千里, a hundred and eight thousand li, is the fixed distance to the West — and it is exactly the reach of a single somersault of Sun Wukong's cloud. The pilgrim will spend fourteen years walking what his disciple can clear in one jump. 乘 in 大乘, the Greater Vehicle, is shèng.
Let this scripture return to your high land, and it can raise the ghosts and lift them from the throng.
能超鬼出群. Note the order of the offer: the scriptures are held out first as a means of releasing ghosts, which is precisely what the Mass in progress was convened to do, and only afterwards as a road to enlightenment.
If there be one willing to go, let him seek the true fruit and the golden body.
正果金身, the true fruit and the golden body, is what the pilgrim gets if he succeeds; 正 in 正果 is zhèng. And note the condition — 若有肯去者, if there be one willing. Heaven names the reward, then waits.
The gatha is heaven's formal commission, and it states in four couplets the entire premise of the novel to come: in the West lies a wondrous scripture; the road to it measures a hundred and eight thousand li; this Greater Vehicle text, brought back, can deliver the dead; and whoever is willing to fetch it will attain the true fruit and golden body of buddhahood.
The distance named is the same as the reach of Sun Wukong's single somersault — a quiet structural irony, since the pilgrim will cross on foot, over fourteen years, what his disciple could clear in an instant. With this dropped slip of paper the pilgrimage passes from the emperor's wish and the Bodhisattva's counsel into explicit divine mandate: the journey is no longer merely advisable but ordained.