破山寺後禪院 （常健）
清晨入古寺，初日照高林。
曲徑通幽處，禪房花木深。
山光悅鳥性，潭影空人心。
萬籟此俱寂，唯聞鐘磬音。
| Po šaṇ juktehen-i amargi samadi hūwa | The Monastery behind Pò Shān Temple | |
| erde julgei juktehen de dosikade, | When I entered the ancient temple early in the morning, | |
| mukdeke šun-i fosoko bujan-i sihin, | the canopy of the woods was lit up by the rising sun. | |
| mudanggai doko daniyan-i ici hafungga, | A winding path went through toward the refuge, | |
| samadi hūwa-i ilha moo fisin. | and thick were the flowers and trees of the monastery. | |
| alin eldepi cecikei banin selacuka, | Birds rejoiced that the mountain was illuminated, | |
| juce helmešehei niyalmai mujilen kenggehun, | as the pond reflected it, the human mind became empty. | |
| eiten asuki nerginde [e]lenggei ekisakai, | For a moment, as all the fainter sounds became quiet, | |
| donjihangge damu jungken kingken-i urkin. | all I heard was the clamor of bells and chime stones. |
You might notice in my transliteration of the title, I used a dot under the n of šaṇ instead of šan. This is to reflect the fact that the n has a dot on it in Manchu, as you can see in the image below.
The general rule is that syllable-final n does not have a dot. One of the Jesuits (probably either Verbiest or Amyot, I don’t remember) tells us that the n without a dot indicates nasalization of the previous vowel. In this case, Jakdan adds the dot because the Chinese word shān 山 ends in a consonant n, not a nasalized vowel. This is something that is easily overlooked, but can sometimes help you tell the difference between a reference to the khan (han) and the Hàn (haṇ).
What is the genitive marker on ekisakai doing? Normally it would make an adverb, like “quietly,” but there’s no verb here for it to modify. From the context here, I think maybe this structure is comparable to the converb -hAi, which conveys that as one action proceeds, a second action proceeds along with it. This form appears in Jakdan’s translation of Lǐ Bái’s “Sitting Alone on Jìngtíng Mountain,” where he says geren cecike deken-i deyehei wajiha, “as the birds flew higher, they disappeared.”
In this case, since we have an adjective, I think Jakdan’s use of this form means that as the fainter sounds (of birds) became quiet, all the poet could hear was the ringing of bells and chime stones. He reinforces this idea by using the noisy word urkin to contrast with the fainter asuki of the previous line.
