鑾輿之盛 The Splendour of the Imperial Equipage
女王聞言，即傳旨，教光祿寺排宴。一壁廂排大駕，出城迎接夫君。眾女官即欽遵王命，打掃宮殿，鋪設庭臺。一班兒擺宴的，火速安排；一班兒擺駕的，流星整備。你看那西梁國雖是婦女之邦，那鑾輿不亞中華之盛。但見：女王闻言，即传旨，教光禄寺排宴。一壁厢排大驾，出城迎接夫君。众女官即钦遵王命，打扫宫殿，铺设庭台。一班儿摆宴的，火速安排；一班儿摆驾的，流星整备。你看那西梁国虽是妇女之邦，那銮舆不亚中华之盛。但见：
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this, the queen at once issued a command setting the Court of Imperial Entertainments to lay out a banquet.
光祿寺 was the office that ran state banquets — a real institution under both the Tang and the Ming, borrowed here intact, rather as if a fairy-tale kingdom were served by a Department of Protocol. 教 is jiào, the "cause someone to" sense.
On the other side the great equipage was marshalled, to go out of the city and receive her lord.
夫君 — her lord, her husband — is used of a man who has not agreed to anything. In 一壁廂 the 一 shifts to yí before the falling tone of 壁.
The women officials reverently obeyed the royal command, swept out the palace halls, and spread the courts and terraces.
鋪設 takes 鋪 as pū, the verb: to spread out, to lay. It is the same character read pù in 鋪面, the shopfront, back in the marketplace.
One party set out the banquet and arranged it with all speed; another party set out the equipage and made ready like a shooting star.
兒 occurs twice, both the small-and-familiar ending er. The two halves are matched members of one construction — 一班兒 … 一班兒 — one party doing this while another does that, and both at a run.
Now see: though Western Liang was a country of women, its imperial equipage yielded nothing to the splendour of the Middle Flowery Land. Behold:
那鑾輿不亞中華之盛 is the claim the whole rhapsody exists to prove — a rhapsody being one of those set showpieces of description, built out of matched pairs of lines, that the storyteller drops in whenever something is to be admired at length: this carriage yields nothing to China's. 那 occurs twice and is the pointing nà both times; 中華 is zhōng plus huá; 不 shifts to bú before the falling tone of 亞. 但見, "behold," is the storyteller's cue that a set description is coming.
Six dragons breathing colour; a pair of phoenixes bringing luck.
The rhapsody opens on a four-and-four couplet and will immediately expand the same two images into seven-character lines — a common opening move in this novel's set descriptions, in which the theme is stated bare and then furnished.
Six dragons breathing colour bear the carriage forth; a pair of phoenixes bringing luck draw on the palanquin.
扶車出 and 駕輦來 finish the two opening images with verbs of motion, one going out and one coming on, so the procession is set moving in both directions at once.
Richly, richly the rare fragrance hangs; in swirling coils the auspicious vapour opens.
The second character of 馥𩡏 is 𩡏, and no authority anywhere records a reading for it: it is absent from the standard reading tables, from 現代漢語詞典, from the reading field of 漢語大字典 and of 通用規範漢字字典, and even the entry for it at zdic carries no reading. Its parts, however, are legible: it is 香, fragrance, written over 郁. So the character is a later, more sumptuous respelling of the ordinary paired word 馥郁 fù yù, richly fragrant, with the fragrance element added on top. The reading yù is taken from that lower part and is this project's own ruling. 氤氳 answers it in the matching position with the standard word for swirling vapour.
Gold fish-tallies and jade pendants — the officers throng; jewelled coils and cloudy tresses — the women rank.
金魚 is the gold fish-shaped tally carried in a pouch by officials above a certain grade under the Tang — a rank badge. The couplet pairs the insignia of office with the ornaments of the hair, and both halves are describing the same crowd.
Mandarin-duck hand-fans screen the royal carriage; kingfisher pearl-blinds shadow the phoenix pins.
掌扇 takes 扇 as the noun shàn: the long-handled ceremonial fans carried beside a sovereign's carriage. Mandarin ducks, 鴛鴦, are the standing emblem of a married pair — so the wedding is being announced by the soft furnishings before anyone has consented to it.
Reed-pipe and song, the notes are fair; string and flute, the sound is in accord.
A second four-and-four couplet, dropped into the middle of the seven-character run to change the pace. 諧 — concord — is doing double duty here: the music is in tune and the match is harmonious.
One sheet of gladness rushes up to the sapphire sky; boundless joy comes forth from the Terrace of the Spirit.
碧漢 is the blue river of heaven, the Milky Way; 靈臺, the Spirit Terrace, is in inner-alchemy usage the heart or seat of consciousness. The couplet sends the gladness up and out, from the body to the sky. In 一片 the 一 shifts to yí before the falling tone of 片.
Three-tiered gauze canopies sway against the vault of heaven; banners of five colours flash upon the imperial stairs.
三簷羅蓋 are the tiered ceremonial parasols of a sovereign's train. This is the last of the display couplets, and the whole piece has climbed steadily — carriage, crowd, fans, music, sky, canopies.
In this land, from of old, no nuptial cup was ever shared; today the queen is matched to a man of parts.
合巹 is the wedding rite in which a gourd is split and the couple drink from the two halves — the standard shorthand for marriage itself, and a rite this country has by definition never performed. This is the only line in the whole rhapsody that states a fact rather than a splendour, and it lands the entire set-piece: all this pomp exists for something that has never happened here.
The rhapsody is a display piece and it is also an argument. Every couplet insists that Western Liang is a proper kingdom — dragons and phoenixes on the carriage, gold tallies on the officials, ceremonial fans, tiered parasols, five-coloured banners, a government department for banquets. The narrator has already said as much in prose, 那鑾輿不亞中華之盛, and the verse spends a hundred and ten characters proving it. What is being denied, at length, is that this place is a curiosity.
The shape of the lines does the organising. Two four-and-four couplets frame the piece and one sits in the middle; everything between is in sevens. The opening pair of images is stated bare and then given verbs in the next line, so the procession seems to start moving as you read it. The direction of the whole thing is upward — from the carriage to the crowd to the fans to the music to the sapphire sky to the canopies swaying against heaven.
Then the last couplet drops. 此地自來無合巹 — in this land, from of old, no nuptial cup has ever been shared. After eight couplets of pageantry the rhapsody names the thing that has never happened here, and the whole display is explained in retrospect: this is not a state occasion of a kind the country knows how to hold. It is the first one. The splendour is improvised, and its scale measures how much the occasion means.
One character in the piece is worth a word. 馥 is followed by 𩡏, for which no source anywhere records a reading — it is 香, fragrance, written on top of the lower half of the ordinary word for "richly fragrant," as though the plain spelling were not perfumed enough. Somebody setting this text wanted the word to look as sumptuous as it sounds, and invented a character to do it. It is a small piece of evidence about how the rhapsody was meant to be received.