金身羅漢 Arhat of the Golden Body
──沙悟淨，汝本是捲簾大將。先因蟠桃會上打碎玻璃盞，貶汝下界，汝落於流沙河，傷生吃人造孽。幸皈吾教，誠敬迦持，保護聖僧，登山牽馬有功，加陞大職正果，為金身羅漢。」──沙悟净，汝本是卷帘大将。先因蟠桃会上打碎玻璃盏，贬汝下界，汝落于流沙河，伤生吃人造孽。幸皈吾教，诚敬迦持，保护圣僧，登山牵马有功，加升大职正果，为金身罗汉。」
逐句解 Line by line
“Sha Wujing: you were once the Great General Curtain-Lifter.”
⚠ 大將 — a great general. The last character is read jiàng here, a commander, not jiāng, the little word that marks a disposal or a coming action, which is how it reads six other times in this same speech. 捲簾, curtain-lifter, was Sha Monk's post in heaven: he raised the blind in front of the Jade Emperor. It sounds menial and was not — it meant standing closest to the throne.
“Formerly, because you smashed a glass cup at the Peach Banquet, I demoted you to the world below, and you fell into the Flowing Sands River and worked wickedness, taking life and eating men.”
⚠ He broke a cup. That is the whole offence, and the sentence was exile and eight hundred years of eating travellers at a ford. 玻璃盞 — a glass bowl. Glass was an import and a rarity, which is presumably the point, and it is the same word the long banquet set piece used earlier for the cups on Taizong's table. Pigsy got drunk and pestered a fairy. Sha Monk dropped the glassware. The punishments were the same.
“Happily you came home to my teaching and held reverently to the empowerment, guarded the holy monk, and earned merit climbing mountains and leading the horse. I promote you to the great office of right fruit: you shall be the Arhat of the Golden Body.”
⚠ 登山牽馬有功 — merit at climbing hills and leading the horse. That is Sha Monk's entire testimonial, and it is the third time in this book that somebody has summed him up by the luggage. ⚠ And the rank is one step down. 羅漢, arhat, is a saint who has ended his own rebirths; a buddha is above that. So of the four pilgrims, two are made buddhas, one an arhat, and one a functionary — and the order is exactly the order in which the novel has always ranked them. 為 is the copula again, shall be, read wéi.
Sha Monk's crime was breaking a cup. That is all of it — he smashed a piece of glassware at a banquet — and he was thrown out of heaven and spent eight hundred years eating travellers at a ford. Pigsy got drunk and pestered a fairy; Sha Monk dropped the glass; the sentences were the same.
⚠ His title in heaven sounds menial and was not. The Curtain-Lifter raised the blind in front of the Jade Emperor, which meant standing closer to the throne than almost anybody.
⚠ And his testimonial is the luggage again: merit at climbing hills and leading the horse. Then the rank, one step below the others — an arhat is a saint who has ended his own rebirths, and a buddha is above that. Two buddhas, one arhat, one functionary. The Buddha has ranked them in exactly the order the novel always has.