無字空本 Scrolls With No Words On Them
當謝佛祖之恩，東行，忽被妖風搶了經去。幸小徒有些神通趕奪，卻俱拋擲散漫。因展看，皆是無字空本。臣等著驚，復去拜告懇求。当谢佛祖之恩，东行，忽被妖风抢了经去。幸小徒有些神通赶夺，却俱抛掷散漫。因展看，皆是无字空本。臣等着惊，复去拜告恳求。
逐句解 Line by line
“We were making our thanks for the Buddha's kindness and going east when all at once a fiendish wind snatched the scriptures away.”
當謝 — ought to have thanked, and so were in the act of thanking. The character is read dāng here, at the time of, not the dàng of treating something as fitting. 妖風, a fiendish wind. The Tang monk still calls it that, though the reader knows it was a white ape acting for a heaven that wanted the blank scrolls found out.
“Luckily my humble disciples have some divine power and went after it, but the scrolls were flung about and scattered everywhere.”
小徒 — my poor disciples, a self-deprecating form. He is being modest about the three men who saved the cargo, in the standard Chinese way of being modest about your own household. 散漫 — scattered and loose, strewn about. Its first character is read sǎn here, the adjective, not sàn, the verb of dispersing.
“And on opening them out, they were all blank — copies with no words on them.”
無字空本 — wordless empty copies. Four characters for the most famous joke in the book. The Buddha's attendants, refused a bribe, handed over a canon of blank paper. The pilgrims carried it out of the Spirit Mountain without looking, and only found out because a thief tore the bundles open in the wind.
“Your servants took fright, and went back to bow and beg and plead.”
著驚 — to be struck with fright. Its first character is read zháo: the reading it takes when something lands on you or gets you, not the light one that hangs on a verb in progress. 拜告懇求 — four verbs of asking in a row, and the escalation is the point. They bowed, they reported, they entreated, they begged.
He tells the blank-scrolls story to the court, and he tells it straight through: the wind, the theft, the disciples going after it, the bundles torn open, and the paper with nothing on it.
He also gets the cause and effect exactly right and does not flinch from it. They were asked for a present. They had none. So the scriptures they were handed had no words in them. The novel has him lay that out in a Tang throne hall in three sentences.
And what the pilgrims did about it was not to complain. Four verbs in a row — bowed, reported, entreated, begged — and back up the mountain. When heaven cheats you, it turns out, you appeal — you do not protest.