幾朝君正 How Many Reigns Of Just Rulers
國王看畢，十分歡喜道：「法師，你那大唐，幾朝君正？幾輩臣賢？至於唐王，因甚作疾回生，著你遠涉山川求經？」国王看毕，十分欢喜道：「法师，你那大唐，几朝君正？几辈臣贤？至于唐王，因甚作疾回生，着你远涉山川求经？」
逐句解 Line by line
When the king had read it through he said with great pleasure, "Master, this Great Tang of yours — how many reigns of upright rulers has it had? How many generations of worthy ministers?"
Two questions built to match, four characters each — 幾朝君正 against 幾輩臣賢 — which the source's punctuation splits and which are put back together here. 朝 is cháo, a reign or a dynasty.
"And as for the Tang emperor — what sickness was it that took him and let him return to life, that he should send you travelling so far over hills and rivers to seek scriptures?"
著 reads zhuó here — the sense of setting somebody to a task, so 著你 is 'sent you'. The sealed chapters read this construction that way without exception, and it is a different thing altogether from the weak zhe of an action in progress. 甚, standing on its own, reads shèn.
The king has read the rescript and taken from it the one thing that interests him: that the Tang emperor died and came back. This is not idle curiosity. He has just called himself long sick, and he is asking a stranger about a monarch who died and did not stay dead.
The first two questions are courtly small talk — how old is your dynasty, how good are your ministers — and the third is the one he actually wants answered. The politeness of the approach is what makes the swerve visible.
The chapter's title promises that the Tang Monk will discourse on a former life. This is the question that sets him off, and the answer runs to a hundred and ninety-one characters of verse.