療理朕躬 Whoever Can Heal Our Person
行者擠到近處，閃開火眼金睛，仔細看時，那榜上卻云：行者挤到近处，闪开火眼金睛，仔细看时，那榜上却云：
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim shoved his way close, opened wide his fiery eyes and golden pupils, looked carefully, and this is what the notice said:
仔 is zǐ in 仔細, careful — the sealed chapters read it that way without exception, against a default of zǎi. The tag is welded to the end of its own sentence and opens the proclamation from inside it.
We, king of Purpuria in the Continent of West Aparagodānīya, since founding our estate have had the four quarters at peace and the hundred families quiet and settled.
朕, the imperial 'we', opens the document. All five occurrences in the chapter are the king's — twice in this proclamation and three times in his own speech. 西牛賀洲 places the kingdom in the western of the four continents, Aparagodānīya, which is where the pilgrims have been travelling since they left the Tang.
Of late, the affairs of the realm proving inauspicious, a settled sickness has kept us to our pillow, dragging on so long that it will not be cured.
難 is nán, hard to — an adverb. Read nàn the same character means a calamity, and the chapter carries only two occurrences in all. 沉痾 is a chronic illness that has settled in and stayed.
Our own Imperial Medical Academy has repeatedly chosen good prescriptions, and has not been able to effect a cure.
調 is tiáo in 調治, to treat and regulate — the same reading as the seasonings Pilgrim was pretending to shop for, and all seven occurrences in the chapter take it.
We now issue this proclamation, summoning far and wide the worthy men of the world.
賢士 echoes the 賢臣 of the rhapsody without being the same word: a worthy man of any station rather than a minister of state. The king who complained that not one minister could save him is now casting outside the court altogether.
Without restriction of north or east, of the Middle Flowery Land or of foreign kingdoms — if any be skilled in medicine, let him ascend our precious hall and treat our person.
中華 names China from inside a kingdom that is not in it — the small geographical oddity of the whole proclamation, and a reminder that the king is casting his net well beyond his own borders.
Should the sickness be but a little mended, we are willing to divide our altars of state in half with him, and this is no empty show.
將 is jiāng, pushing forward what is to be divided. 社稷 — the altars of soil and grain, where a ruler sacrificed for his people — stands for sovereignty itself, so what is being offered here is half the kingdom.
For this cause it is issued and posted up.
給 reads jǐ. 康熙字典 at 糸部六畫 gives one relevant reading — 《廣韻》《正韻》居立切, 音急 — glossed 相足也 and 供也，備也, to supply and to provide, which is exactly what issuing a notice is. No gěi is recorded there at all; that is a later colloquial reading, and it is what the machine reaches for.
Such is the proclamation.
Four characters of chancery formula to close a document. The phrase does no work except to mark that the text has ended.
The rhyme scan comes back empty, and that is the finding rather than a failure of it. Twenty-one line-endings produce seventeen different endings across all four tones. This is a proclamation in balanced prose, and the edition sets it apart as a showcase because it is a set piece, not because it is a poem. Every reading in it falls to sense.
The document is beautifully judged as an official act. It states the reign's good condition first, admits the illness second, records that the proper channel has already been tried and failed, and only then opens the field — the order in which any government concedes it needs outside help.
And then it offers half the kingdom. 願將社稷平分 is an extravagance no working state would post on a public wall, and it tells the reader how far gone the king is. 決不虛示 — this is no empty show — is the sentence of a man who expects not to be believed.