解鈴人 Who Ties The Bell Unties It
這正是：犼項金鈴何人解？解鈴人還問繫鈴人。菩薩將鈴兒套在犼項下，飛身高坐。你看他四足蓮花生焰焰，滿身金縷迸森森。大慈悲回南海不題。这正是：犼项金铃何人解？解铃人还问系铃人。菩萨将铃儿套在犼项下，飞身高坐。你看他四足莲花生焰焰，满身金缕迸森森。大慈悲回南海不题。
逐句解 Line by line
This is a case of: the golden bells at the hou's neck — who is to loose them?
The tag 這正是： announces a couplet, and a couplet follows — but the source keeps the whole passage as a single prose line with no verse indent, so this edition keeps it as prose too. 解 is jiě, to untie.
The one who unties the bell must still ask the one who tied it.
This is a well-known saying, usually given as 解鈴還須繫鈴人 — the person who tied the bell on the tiger is the person who must take it off. 還 is hái here, still — the adverb, not the verb of returning that the same character took twice a few lines back.
The Bodhisattva slipped the bells over the hou's neck and sprang up to sit high on his back.
套 is to slip a loop over something — the bells go back on as a collar, which is what they were. 將 is jiāng, the disposal marker.
Look at him: lotus flowers blazing under all four feet, threads of gold bristling over his whole body.
Another couplet the source does not set as verse — seven characters against seven, with a doubled word closing each. 焰焰 is blazing; 森森 is bristling, thick-set.
The Great Compassion returned to the Southern Sea, and of that no more for now.
Eight characters to close the episode. 不題 is the storyteller's scene cut, used three times in this chapter. 大慈悲 is Guanyin by title rather than name.
解鈴還須繫鈴人 is one of the best-known sayings in Chinese, and the text has just spent a whole chapter acting it out with real bells. The proverb comes from a Buddhist anecdote about a bell tied to a tiger's neck: the monk who asks who can remove it is told that whoever tied it on must do the untying. The saying puts the bell on a tiger, 虎項; the text writes 犼項, swapping in the beast actually standing there — and here the bells genuinely came off its neck and go back on.
Both of the couplets in this passage look like verse and neither is set as verse. The source keeps the whole block as one prose line, so this edition does too — and neither pair rhymes in any case: 解 against 人, 焰 against 森. They are antithetical couplets, balanced but unrhymed.
The bells go back on as what they always were: a collar. 套在犼項下 — slipped over the hou's neck — and the object that burned a mountain and terrorised a kingdom becomes harness again in five characters.