安邦立國 A Minister Who Steadies The Realm
國王聞言,忽作呻吟之聲,問道:「法師,那賢臣是那邦來者?」三藏道:「就是我王駕前丞相,姓魏名徵。他識天文,知地理,辨陰陽,乃安邦立國之大宰輔也。国王闻言,忽作呻吟之声,问道:「法师,那贤臣是那邦来者?」三藏道:「就是我王驾前丞相,姓魏名征。他识天文,知地理,辨阴阳,乃安邦立国之大宰辅也。
逐句解 Line by line
The king, hearing this, of a sudden let out a groan, and asked, "Master, from what country did that worthy minister come?"
Two instances of 那 sit a few characters apart and read alike as nà: the first points at the minister already named in the verse, the second at a state not yet identified.
Tripitaka said, "He is none other than the chancellor before my sovereign's throne, surnamed Wei and named Zheng.
相 is xiàng in 丞相, a chancellor — one of only four sites in the chapter to take that reading, against nine of the xiāng of mutuality. The verse called him only 賢臣, a worthy officer, twice over. Here at last he is given a name.
"He reads the signs of heaven and knows the lie of the earth, and can tell the dark from the bright; he is a great chief counsellor by whom a realm is steadied and a state established."
Three four-character clauses in a row, then a long one — the same shape as the rhapsody just finished, carried over into prose now that the verse has stopped.
The groan is the first sound the king makes in this chapter that is not speech, and it comes before the question rather than after it. He has heard about an emperor who died and came back, and something in him gives way.
The name arrives only now. The rhapsody withheld it for a hundred and ninety-one characters, calling the man a worthy minister twice and nothing more, and it takes the king's question to draw it out.
Tripitaka describes a man who can read the sky, the ground, and the dark and the bright — which is to say a man who can see across the boundary the king is interested in. The praise is professional, and to a sick monarch it must sound like a job description.