道場莊嚴 The Splendor of the Ritual Site
唐王大駕早到寺前，吩咐住了音樂響器。下了車輦，引著多官，拜佛拈香。三匝已畢，擡頭觀看，果然好座道場。但見：唐王大驾早到寺前，吩咐住了音乐响器。下了车辇，引着多官，拜佛拈香。三匝已毕，抬头观看，果然好座道场。但见：
逐句解 Line by line
The Tang king's great carriage had come early to the temple gate, and he gave order to still the music and the sounding instruments.
樂 in 音樂, music, is yuè.
Descending from the palanquin, he led his many officials in worship of the Buddha and the offering of incense.
著 in 引著, leading, is the ongoing-action zhe.
Three circumambulations completed, he raised his head to look, and it was indeed a fine ritual site. Behold:
三匝, three circuits, is the reverent walk around the images — three times round, as it is still done. The lead-in 但見, behold, ushers in the descriptive rhapsody.
Pennons and streamers fluttering in the dance; jeweled canopies flashing bright.
The couplet names two subjects, 幢幡飄舞 and 寶蓋飛輝, and the next four lines take them up one at a time. Watch for the same move again with 瓶插仙花 and 爐焚檀降: state the pair, then expand each half. It is the whole architecture of the poem.
Pennons and streamers fluttering in the dance — they seemed to hold the air, band upon band of colored cloud a-sway;
The first subject expanded. The banners are picked up word for word and given their effect, 道道彩霞, band after band of coloured cloud. The repetition is the form working, not a copyist nodding.
jeweled canopies flashing bright — they caught the sun, wave upon wave of crimson lightning shot through.
The second subject expanded to match: canopy for banner, 紅電 for 彩霞. Sunlight through silk is called lightning, much the more violent of the two images, and deliberately so.
The World-Honored One's golden image, its features serene and full; the arhats' jade countenances, awesome and fierce.
世尊, the World-Honoured One, is the Buddha; 羅漢 are the arhats. 臻臻 and 烈烈 give the central image its composure and the attendants their severity — the statuary is described as though it had a temperament.
In vases, immortal flowers; in censers, sandalwood and jiangzhen incense burning.
檀降 is sandalwood, 檀香, together with jiangzhen incense, 降香, another fragrant wood; 降 here is read jiàng.
In vases, immortal flowers — brocade trees glimmering, spread through the precious temple;
寶剎, the precious temple, reads 剎 as chà, not shā.
in censers, sandalwood and jiangzhen incense burning — fragrant clouds curling thick, piercing the clear empyrean.
降 reads jiàng in 檀降, a compound of sandalwood and gharuwood rather than the verb of descending. Note the movement: the censer smoke rises where the flowers of the matching line stood still.
Fresh seasonal fruits heaped on vermilion trays; wondrous sugar-pastries piled on painted tables.
The offering-tables. 砌 is to stack in courses, the word for laying brick — the fruit is built rather than heaped. Vermilion dishes and painted stands are the last solid objects before the poem turns to the monks.
Eminent monks ranged in rows, chanting the true scriptures, praying to pluck the forsaken souls from their tribulation.
難 in 苦難, suffering, tribulation, is nàn, not nán. With that word the poem stops describing and starts praying.
The rhapsody on the ritual site is a set-piece of Buddhist description, cataloguing the assembly's splendour in cascading parallel clauses: fluttering pennons and flashing canopies likened to drifting cloud and crimson lightning, the serene gold of the Buddha and the fierce jade of the arhats, flowers and incense, heaped fruit and sugar-work.
It is all surface magnificence until the closing couplet, which turns without warning to purpose — the eminent monks chant to pluck the forsaken souls out of their tribulation. The display is grounded at the last moment in the rite's true object, the deliverance of the dead, and the passage moves from spectacle to prayer within a single line.