壽星臨會 The Star of Longevity
王母正著仙姬、仙子歌舞，觥籌交錯，不多時，忽又聞得一陣異香來鼻噢，驚動滿堂星與宿、天仙。佛祖把杯停，各各擡頭迎目候。霄漢中間，現老人，手捧靈芝飛藹，繡葫蘆藏蓄萬年丹，寶籙名書千紀壽。王母正着仙姬、仙子歌舞，觥筹交错，不多时，忽又闻得一阵异香来鼻噢，惊动满堂星与宿、天仙。佛祖把杯停，各各抬头迎目候。霄汉中间，现老人，手捧灵芝飞蔼，绣葫芦藏蓄万年丹，宝箓名书千纪寿。
逐句解 Line by line
The Queen Mother was just having the immortal maidens and lasses sing and dance, horn-cups and tallies crossing merrily, when before long there suddenly came a waft of strange fragrance to the nose, startling all the stars and constellations and heavenly immortals filling the hall.
正著 takes 著 as zhuó, setting someone to a task — the same use as 又著仙姬 a line earlier. 觥籌交錯 is the good one: horn cups and tally sticks getting jumbled together, because at a proper drinking party nobody can keep track of whose forfeit is whose any longer. It is still the idiom for a lively feast. 一陣 takes yí before zhèn (falling tone). 星與宿 keeps 宿 as xiù, a constellation or lunar lodge. One point here is unsettled: 噢 is working as a verb, the fragrance reaching and being smelled at the nose — that is, standing in for 嗅. We encode xiù to match that sense, and the reading waits on confirmation. The commentary sets out the textual position.
The Buddha set down his cup; each raised his head and watched expectantly. In the midst of the cloud-river appeared an old man, bearing in his hands a numinous mushroom amid drifting mist, an embroidered gourd storing the ten-thousand-year elixir, and a treasure-register inscribing a lifespan of a thousand cycles.
霄漢 is the cloud-reaches, the Milky Way. 中間 keeps 中 as zhōng. 靈芝 (líng zhī) is the numinous fungus of immortality — the glossy kidney-shaped bracket mushroom in every Chinese painting of the subject, and the thing every longevity god is holding. 寶籙 keeps 籙 as lù, a heavenly register. The old man is Shòu xīng, the Star of Longevity, arriving with his full kit.
In his grotto, heaven and earth are his to roam at will; within his gourd, sun and moon attend his attainment. He wanders the Four Seas, delighting in ease; idle and free, the Ten Continents gather to him.
壺中日月, sun and moon inside a gourd, is a favourite Daoist image: an entire world with its own weather and its own clock, kept in a hermit's bottle, time running at whatever rate the adept prefers. 樂 here is lè, to delight in, not yuè, music. 十洲 are the Ten Continents where the immortals live; 輻輳 (fú còu) is to converge the way spokes converge on a hub.
He has gone to the Peach Banquet and been drunk how many times; waking, the bright moon is still as it was. Long of head, big of ear, short of frame — in the quarter of the South Pole he is called the Elder of Long Life.
長頭大耳 keeps 長 as cháng, long — the domed forehead and outsized ears on every statue of him. 南極 is the South Pole, and the Star of Longevity is 南極老人星, the Old Man of the South Pole, which is the star Canopus. 還依舊 keeps 還 as hái, still. The portrait closes on something gently comic: a deathless drunk for whom an age passes like one night's sleep, waking to find the same moon up.
The banquet now receives its first great guest: the Star of Longevity (壽星, the Old Man of the South Pole, the star Canopus), arriving on a waft of fragrance with the emblems of long life — the numinous 靈芝, the elixir-gourd, a register recording a lifespan of a thousand cycles. His portrait-verse is affectionate and faintly comic: a deathless adept for whom Peach Banquets and drunken ages pass like a single night, and who wakes each time to the same bright moon.
The 壺中日月 image — sun and moon inside a gourd — is a cherished Daoist one: an entire cosmos, with its own flow of time, held in a hermit's bottle. It rhymes pointedly with the chapter's central lesson. The monkey could not escape the Buddha's palm because he could not see the frame he was inside; the Star of Longevity, by contrast, carries a whole world about with him and roams the larger one at his ease. Mastery, the contrast suggests, is not breaking out of what contains you. It is knowing the right relation of small to great and living comfortably in it.
A textual note. The 世德堂 source writes the character 噢 in 異香來鼻噢, where the sense is plainly that the fragrance reached and was smelled at the nose — the character doing the work of 嗅 (xiù, to smell). The Wikisource edition flags a rare variant glyph, 𠺗, as an alternate form at this point. We encode the source's own character 噢 as it stands and record the variant openly, rather than swapping in the rarer form. The reading xiù follows the sense, and is flagged for confirmation.