Xuanzang bowed once more, received the command, and withdrew; then he went to the Huasheng Temple, gathered the many monks, had meditation couches built, adorned the merit-hall, and put the music in order.

禪榻 are meditation couches. 樂 in 音樂, music, is yuè, not the lè of pleasure — one character carrying two of the commonest words in the language.

He chose enlightened monks great and small, twelve hundred in all, and distributed them among the upper, middle, and lower halls.

得 in 選得 is the outcome de; 分 in 分派, to distribute or assign, is fēn. 中 in 上中下三堂 is the ordinary zhōng, middle.

Before all the Buddha-images the appointments were complete, and everything set in due order.

頭頭有次 is everything in its right order, item by item.

He fixed upon the third day of the ninth month of that year, an auspicious hour of a propitious day, to open a Grand Mass of Land and Water to run seven times seven — forty-nine days.

黃道良辰 is a lucky hour on a lucky day — the 'yellow-way' days marked out in the almanac, much as a diary shades the bank holidays. The 七七四十九日, seven sevens or forty-nine days, is the set length for delivering the dead, matching the seven weeks Buddhist teaching allows a soul between one life and the next.

He drew up a memorial and submitted it to the throne.

Procedure: even a mass for the dead is convened by formal petition.

Taizong, with his civil and military officers and the imperial kin, all came to the assembly at the appointed time to offer incense and hear the exposition.

拈香 is to take up a pinch of incense between the fingers — the emperor's own small act of devotion, done with his hands and not by proxy.

There is a poem in witness. The poem says:

The doubled formula 有詩為證。詩曰 heads the celebratory verse. 為 in 為證 is wèi.

The dragon-year gathered in Zhenguan, its very thirteenth; the king proclaimed the assembled host to expound the scriptures.

龍集, 'the year-star gathered,' is a formal way of writing a date, the kind of phrase kept for inscriptions. 貞觀正十三 is the thirteenth year of the Zhenguan reign, 639, with 正 read zhèng, exactly, the full.

At the ritual site they opened the exposition of the measureless Law; cloud and mist and light rode upon the great-vow shrine.

無量法 is the measureless Dharma; 量 in 無量 is liàng. A 龕 (kān) is a shrine or niche; 乘 in 光乘 is chéng, to ride or mount — the same character that will shortly mean Vehicle, Lesser and Greater, and carry the whole doctrinal argument of the chapter.

By imperial edict, grace was bestowed to raise the lofty temple; the Golden Cicada, shedding its shell, was transformed toward the West.

上剎, the lofty temple, reads 剎 as chà, the Buddhist-temple sense from the Sanskrit kṣetra, not shā. In 金蟬脫殼, the golden cicada sheds its shell, 殼 takes the literary reading qiào. The phrase is still live Chinese for slipping out of a trap and leaving a decoy behind — and it is used here of the man whose former name was the Golden Cicada, pointing him west.

Broadly bestowing good fruits, it delivered the drowned and the sunken; upholding the teaching and proclaiming it — before and after, the Three.

沒 in 沉沒, to sink or drown, is mò. 教 in 秉教, upholding the teaching, is jiào. The closing 前後三 is obscure — perhaps the Three Teachings, before and after — and the translation keeps it literal rather than choosing for the reader.