Translations
Magistrate title: Second court - King Chu Jiang
Right couplet
By middle age, one has already engaged in a great deal of perverse behavior;
It's lamentable that one doesn't cultivate the self early enough.
Left couplet
Whenever anything objectionable is remedied in the present,
A thousand torments and pains will melt away.
On magistrate’s desk: Good and evil are clearly demarcated.
Attendant in front of desk: Reward goodness.
Like the image of the first magistrate, King Chu Jiang sits on the left of the scroll and faces right. All five of the first judges are positioned in this fashion, whereas the second five are just the opposite. It suggests that these scrolls hung in two rows with a clear center point. According to Lothar Ledderose, a portrait of Ksitigarbha -- the bodhisattva sent by Amitabha to circulate through the underworld preaching the Buddhist law and offering salvation to all -- would sometimes hang between these two rows in a monastery. In the Song Dynasty cliff carvings at Dazu, the magistrates are again lined up in two sets of five with Ksitigarbha between them.