蛇盤山鷹愁澗 Coiled-Snake Mountain and Eagle-Grief Gorge
卻說行者伏侍唐僧西進，行經數日，正是那臘月寒天，朔風凜凜，滑凍凌凌。走的是些懸崖峭壁崎嶇路，疊嶺層巒險峻山。三藏在馬上，遙聞唿喇喇水聲聒耳，回頭叫：「悟空，是那裡水響？」行者道：「我記得此處叫做蛇盤山鷹愁澗，想必是澗裡水響。」說不了，馬到澗邊，三藏勒韁觀看。但見：却说行者伏侍唐僧西进，行经数日，正是那腊月寒天，朔风凛凛，滑冻凌凌。走的是些悬崖峭壁崎岖路，叠岭层峦险峻山。三藏在马上，遥闻唿喇喇水声聒耳，回头叫：「悟空，是那里水响？」行者道：「我记得此处叫做蛇盘山鹰愁涧，想必是涧里水响。」说不了，马到涧边，三藏勒缰观看。但见：
逐句解 Line by line
Now the Pilgrim served the Tang monk on their westward way, and after several days of travel it was the very dead of the twelfth month's cold: a north wind blew keen and biting, and the frozen ground lay glassy and slick.
卻說 (quèshuō), "now it is told," is the storyteller's formula for taking up a thread again. 臘月 (làyuè) is the twelfth lunar month, the depth of winter; 朔風 (shuòfēng) is the north wind, 朔 denoting the north. The paired binomes 凜凜 (bitter, piercing) and 凌凌 (glazed with ice) fix the season's harshness in sound as much as sense.
The road they walked ran by sheer cliffs and jagged bluffs, a rugged and broken track, over steep peaks and range upon range of piled-up ridges.
A parallel couplet worked into the prose — 懸崖峭壁 ("hanging cliffs, sheer walls") answered by 疊嶺層巒 ("layered ridges, tiered summits"). 崎嶇 (qíqū) is "rugged, uneven"; 險峻 (xiǎnjùn), "precipitous." The doubled landscape diction is conventional scene-setting for a hard mountain passage.
Sanzang, up on his horse, caught from far off the rushing gurgle of water grating at his ear, and turned his head to call: "Wukong, where is that water sounding?"
唿喇喇 (hūlālā) is onomatopoeia for rushing water; 聒耳 (guō'ěr), "to din in the ear" (聒 read guō). 悟空, "Awakened to Emptiness," is the Pilgrim's dharma-name. Here 那裡 is interrogative — "where" — hence read nǎ, not the demonstrative nà.
Said the Pilgrim: "I recall this place is called Coiled-Snake Mountain, and the gorge here Eagle-Grief Ravine; it must be the water sounding down in the gorge."
蛇盤山 (Shépánshān), "Coiled-Snake Mountain," and 鷹愁澗 (Yīngchóujiàn), "Eagle-Grief Gorge" — the ravine so named, tradition holds, because it is so sheer and deep that even a hawk crossing it takes fright. 澗 (jiàn) is a mountain torrent, or the gorge that holds it. 記得 takes the resultative 得 (de).
Before he had finished speaking the horse reached the water's edge, and Sanzang drew up his rein to look. And this was the sight:
勒韁 (lè jiāng), "to draw up the rein": 勒 is read lè in the sense of reining in a mount, not lēi ("to pull taut"). 但見 ("one saw only") is the standard formula ushering in the descriptive verse that follows.
A trickling cold vein of water winds its way out through the clouds; its deep, clear ripples take up the sun and give back red.
涓涓 (juānjuān) is the murmur of a slender stream; 寒脈, the "cold vein" of the water's course. 湛湛 (zhànzhàn) is "deep and limpid." The couplet opens the set-piece with the torrent at its most delicate.
Its sound stirs like night rain, heard through a hidden valley; its brightness breaks like dawn cloud, dazzling the empty sky.
The lines set sound against colour: the water heard as 夜雨 ("night rain") in a 幽谷 ("secluded valley"), then seen as 朝霞 ("dawn glow," 朝 read zhāo). 眩 (xuàn) is to dazzle.
From dizzying heights the waves fly up and spit out shattered jade; a single pool resounds, and roars in the clear wind.
仞 (rèn) is an old measure of height (about eight 尺), and "a thousand 仞" is simply hyperbole for a sheer immensity. 噴碎玉 ("spraying broken jade") is the stock image for white water; 一泓 (yìhóng) is a measure-word for a body of clear water.
It flows off to lose itself in a boundless reach of misted waves, where gulls and egrets forget each other and no angler ever comes.
萬頃 (wàn qǐng), "ten thousand 頃" (a large land-measure), stands for a limitless watery expanse. 鷗鷺相忘 — "gulls and egrets forget one another" — recalls the 《列子》 parable of the man the gulls ceased to fear once he had lost all scheming intent; 相 is read xiāng, "each other." The set-piece closes on untroubled, forgetful calm.
Chapter fifteen resumes the journey in the dead of winter and turns at once to the episode that gives it its title. The two halves — 蛇盤山諸神暗佑 ("at Coiled-Snake Mountain the gods give secret protection") and 鷹愁澗意馬收韁 ("at Eagle-Grief Gorge the will-horse is reined in") — announce both an outward adventure and its inner sense. The white horse Sanzang has ridden since Cháng'ān will be devoured here and replaced by a transformed dragon, and in the novel's allegorical grammar that new mount is the 意馬, the "will-horse": the wandering will that must be haltered and put to service, just as Sun Wukong, the 心猿 or "mind-monkey," must be. The chapter's real subject is the disciplining of the will.
Before any of that, the text pauses for a formal landscape poem in the regulated 律詩 manner — a set-piece the vernacular novel deploys whenever a striking place must be seen rather than merely named. Its craft is in balance: sound played against colour (the torrent heard as night rain, seen as dawn glow), immensity against delicacy (a "thousand 仞" of flying spray beside a single trickling "cold vein"). It ends on gulls and egrets that "forget one another," an old 《列子》 emblem of a mind emptied of guile and so at peace. The serenity is deliberate and ironic: within a few lines this tranquil water will erupt, and a dragon will swallow the pilgrims' horse whole.