Taizong and his civil and military officers all offered incense, made obeisance to the golden body of the Buddha-Patriarch, and paid reverence to the arhats.

佛祖金身 is the golden body of the Buddha-Patriarch — the gilded image itself, not a figure of speech. Both occurrences of 了 are the completed-action le.

Then the Grand Expositor and Chief Samgha-Controller, the Dharma Master Chen Xuanzang, led the assembled monks in ranged obeisance to the Tang king.

那 in 又見那 is the pointing nà; 都 in 都綱, Chief Samgha-Controller, is dū.

The rites concluded, they divided into ranks and each settled in his meditation-seat.

分 in 分班, to divide into ranks, is fēn. A 禪位 here is the meditation-place assigned to each monk.

The Dharma Master presented the Proclamation for the Relief of the Forsaken for Taizong to read. The proclamation said:

The 濟孤榜文, Proclamation for the Relief of the Forsaken Souls, is the assembly's statement of its own purpose — a mission statement, posted up. The lead-in 榜曰, the proclamation said, heads the document.

'Supreme virtue is vast and boundless; the Chan school, still and extinguished. Pure and numinous and penetrating, it flows through the Three Realms.'

寂滅 renders nirvāṇa. The 三界, Three Realms of desire, form and formlessness, are the whole of conditioned existence, everywhere a being can be. The proclamation opens in the high parallel prose of a Buddhist memorial, four characters answering four.

'In a thousand transformations and myriad changes, it governs the yin and the yang. In essence and function truly constant, it is without limit or end.'

體用, essence and function, is one of the great working pairs of Chinese thought, Buddhist and Neo-Confucian alike: what a thing is, set against what it does. 統攝, to govern or embrace, reads 攝 as shè.

'Regarding those forsaken souls, they are deeply to be pitied. Herein, in obedience to Taizong's sage command, we have selected and assembled the monks to sit in Chan and expound the Law.'

哀愍, to pity, to grieve for, is the word the whole rite turns on. The motive is compassion for the dead whom nobody mourns.

'Opening wide the gate of expedient means, broadly plying the boat and oar of compassion, we would universally ferry the multitudes from the sea of suffering, and free them from the deep affliction of the Six Ways.'

方便 (fāng biàn, Sanskrit upāya) is expedient means — the teaching bent to fit whoever is in front of you. 慈悲舟楫, the boat and oar of compassion, and 苦海, the sea of suffering, are stock Buddhist figures, and they work as a pair: the sea is what you are drowning in, the boat is what comes out for you. 六趣 (liù qù) is the Six Ways of rebirth.

'Leading them back to the true path, they shall roam freely in the primal vastness; in movement and rest, in non-action, they shall be merged into pure simplicity.'

The vocabulary turns sharply Daoist here: 鴻濛, the primal vastness before things separated out, and 混成純素, merged into pure simplicity. 無為 (wú wéi), non-action, reads 為 as wéi. A Buddhist rite drafted in Daoist words is the Three-Teachings harmony of the debate put into practice rather than argued.

'By this good cause, they shall be summoned to the reward of the Pure Capital and its crimson towers; availing themselves of our excellent assembly, they shall escape from hell and the cage of the mortal world.'

清都絳闕, the Pure Capital and its crimson towers, is the Daoist celestial city — and the souls of a Buddhist mass are being invited to it. 都 in 清都 is dū; 乘 in 乘吾勝會, availing themselves of our assembly, is chéng.

'Soon they shall ascend to the Land of Ultimate Bliss to wander at will, and come and go in the Western Quarter as they please.'

極樂, the Land of Ultimate Bliss, Sukhāvatī, reads 樂 as lè. 西方, the Western Quarter, is the Pure Land of Amitābha — and, in a novel about going west, a quiet piece of foreshadowing dropped into a liturgy.

The poem says:

詩曰 introduces the votive verse that closes the proclamation. The document ends not with a command but with a prayer, which tells you what kind of document it was meant to be.

One censer of longevity's incense, a few scrolls of the rebirth registers.

超生籙, registers of rebirth, are the ritual rolls that release a soul to a better birth — paperwork again, filed upward. 卷 in 幾卷 is read juǎn, following this reader's convention for 卷; as a measure-word for scrolls, juàn could also be argued.

The boundless wondrous Law proclaimed; the limitless grace of Heaven bathing all.

無邊 and 無際, boundless and limitless, fix the scale the verse means to work at.

Grievances and sins all dissolved away; the forsaken souls all freed from prison.

冤孽, grievances and sins, are the karmic bonds that hold souls in the hell-prison. 盡 in 盡消除 is jìn, utterly.

May it guard our realm and household — in peace and quiet, myriad blessings for all.

The verse closes where votive poems always close, on a prayer for the peace and prosperity of the state. The dead are delivered, the realm is secured, and the document is complete.