The Bodhisattva and the Guardian were not long in reaching Coiled-Snake Mountain.

不多時 is "in no long while". The distance that cost the Guardian a whole passage of suspense is crossed, for the Bodhisattva, in three characters.

They halted their auspicious cloud in mid-air, and looking down beheld Sun the Pilgrim at the brink of the gorge, bawling abuse.

留住祥雲 is to halt the auspicious cloud. That she stops in mid-air to watch him rage for a moment before coming down is a small, dry piece of characterisation. She has seen this before.

The Bodhisattva bade the Guardian call him up.

著 is causative here, read zhuó.

The Guardian brought down his cloud-head and, passing Sanzang by, went straight to the gorge and said to the Pilgrim: "The Bodhisattva is come."

不經由三藏 is "without going by way of Sanzang", and the detail is quietly devastating. This is the monk's pilgrimage. He is sitting a few hundred paces away. Nobody consults him, nobody informs him, and he will find out that a Bodhisattva came only after she has gone again.

Hearing it, the Pilgrim sprang up on his cloud into the air,

聞得 takes the unstressed de; 縱雲 is to spring up on a cloud. Note the direction of travel. He does not come down to receive her. He goes up to have it out with her.

and shouted at her: "You there, teacher of the Seven Buddhas, sovereign of the Compassionate Faith — how came you to contrive a scheme to injure me?"

七佛之師, "teacher of the Seven Buddhas of the past", and 慈悲的教主, "sovereign of the Compassionate Faith", are Guanyin's genuine honorifics — and he is using them the way one might address a traffic warden as "Your Excellency". 生方法兒 is to hatch a scheme. It is blasphemy of a high order, and completely in character.

Said the Bodhisattva: "Why, you insolent ape, you boorish red-rumped baboon!

And she gives as good as she gets, which is the joy of the scene. 我把你這個… is the exclamatory scolding frame, roughly "why, you —!" 馬流 (written for 馬騮) and 赤尻, "red rump", are both southern slang for a monkey; 村愚 is boorish and thick. The Bodhisattva of Compassion answers abuse with abuse, fluently, and the passage is much funnier for how well she does it.

Time and again I have exerted myself to the utmost, delivered up a scripture-seeker, and charged him strictly to save your life.

再三盡意 is to exert oneself to the utmost, over and over (盡 is always jìn). 度 is the Buddhist dù, to ferry across, to deliver — the same crossing-over metaphor as pāramitā — and 度得 takes 得 as dé. 叮嚀 is to enjoin strictly, repeatedly.

How is it that you do not come to thank me for the gift of your living, but come instead to brawl at me?"

活命之恩 is the debt owed for a life spared; 嚷鬧 is to brawl and make an uproar. The charge of ingratitude is entirely just, which is exactly why it fails to land.

Said the Pilgrim: "A fine turn you have done me!

弄得我好哩, "a fine turn you have done me", is bitterly ironic, with the unstressed de tying the doing to its result.

Once you had let me out, you might have left me to my freedom and my sport, and there an end.

逍遙自在, "free and unfettered", is the Zhuangzi ideal of unconstrained wandering — one of the great phrases of Chinese philosophy, and still in daily use for a life without obligations. Then 耍子, "to lark about", drops it straight down to a monkey's idea of liberty. The collision of the two registers in one sentence is the joke, and Wukong is not making it on purpose.

The other day you met me above the sea and rebuked me in a few words; you bade me come and serve the Tang monk with all my heart and strength — well and good.

迎著 takes the unstressed zhe: she was coming toward him, intercepting him in mid-flight above the sea, and 迎著 names that continuing motion — as one 迎著風, faces into the wind — rather than an arrival at some goal. Set it against 撞著, "run up against", earlier in the chapter, where the 著 is zháo and the collision has actually happened. 傷了我幾句 is "wounded me with a few words"; 盡心竭力, "with all one's heart and all one's strength", is the language of loyal service, still standard in Chinese today — and he is quoting it back at her with his teeth clenched.

But why did you send him a flowered cap, and cozen me into wearing it upon my head to my torment?

花帽, the flowered cap, was the wrapping that concealed the golden fillet; 哄 is to cozen, to trick somebody into something. This is the grievance, and the important thing about it is that he is right. The deception was hers.

You made this fillet grow into old Sun's skull, and taught him besides to recite a scroll of some Tight-Fillet Spell,

箍子 is the band or fillet; 長在 is "grew fast into", with 長 read zhǎng, to grow — not the cháng of "long". The 緊箍兒咒, the Tight-Fillet Spell, is the device by which a monk who cannot fight governs a disciple who cannot be fought. 甚麼 takes 甚 as shén, and the contempt in "some scroll of a whatever-spell" is audible.

and set that old monk reciting it over and over, till this head of mine ached and ached again. Is that not injuring me?"

著那老和尚 — 著 causative, zhuó, "set him to it". The doubled 念了又念 and 疼了又疼 mimic the thing they describe: recited and recited, ached and ached. You can hear the grinding repetition in the grammar.

The Bodhisattva laughed and said: "You monkey, you would not obey commands, you would not accept the true fruit;

She laughs, which is worth noticing — she is not offended. 不遵教令 is refusing to obey instruction; 正果, Sanskrit bodhi, the "true fruit", is the goal of the religious life. She does not deny the trick. She justifies it.

and had I not bound you thus, you would be deceiving your superiors and defying Heaven again. How would you know good from ill?

拘係 is to bind, to hold in check; 誑上欺天, "deceive superiors and defy Heaven", restates the formal charge from his rebellion. 知甚好歹 takes 甚 as shén, "what" — how would you know good from ill?

If you blundered into calamity as you did before, who would take you in charge?

再似從前 takes 似 as sì, "as before"; 收管 is to take in charge, to be answerable for somebody. The argument is disciplinary rather than theological — who would be responsible for you? — and it is none the weaker for that.

It needed just this ordeal to make you willing to enter the gateway of my yoga."

魔頭 is literally a demon-chief, but as used here it means an ordeal, a tormenting trial. 瑜伽 yú qié transliterates yoga, which here means the disciplined path itself rather than any posture. Her claim is precise: the fillet is not punishment but method. The ordeal is the doorway.

Said the Pilgrim: "Well, let that pass; call it my ordeal if you must.

作做 is "let it be reckoned as". He concedes the point about the fillet with very poor grace, and only in order to get to a fresh grievance.

But why did you take that guilty vile dragon and set it here to work its sorceries, and let it eat my master's horse?

成精 is to become a sprite, to work sorceries. And now he turns her own argument round on her: if you bind me for my crimes, what are you doing stationing a condemned dragon where it can commit new ones?

That is to loose a wicked creature to do evil, and it is very ill done."

縱放歹人為惡, "loose a wicked creature to do evil" — here 為 is wéi, to do, not the wèi ("for the sake of") that turns up in her reply a line later. 太不善也 is "it is very ill done". The monkey is now lecturing the Bodhisattva of Compassion on ethics, and the novel lets him.

Said the Bodhisattva: "That dragon I myself petitioned the Jade Emperor for, and begged to have him placed here, expressly to serve the scripture-seeker as a mount.

親奏玉帝 is to have petitioned the Jade Emperor in person; 專為 takes 為 as wèi, "expressly for". Her answer is not a defence but a disclosure, and it dissolves the argument rather than winning it: the dragon was never an obstacle. It was the provision.

Consider: how should a common horse from the Eastern Land traverse these ten thousand streams and thousand hills?

凡馬 is a common horse, as against a dragon-horse; 歷得 takes 得 as dé, "able to get through". And listen to the phrase: 萬水千山 inverts the 千山萬水 that Sanzang wept over when the horse was lost. The same four characters, the halves swapped, and turned from a lament into an argument.

How should it reach that Buddha-land of Vulture Peak?

靈山 is Vulture Peak, Gṛdhrakūṭa, where the Buddha preaches; 佛地 is the Buddha-land. 佛 is always fó.

It needs this dragon-horse, and then only will the road be passable."

須是得 is "it must have"; 方才去得 is "only then can one go" — both 得 read dé. The point is sharper than it looks. The horse the pilgrimage lost was never good enough for the pilgrimage in the first place.

Said the Pilgrim: "But he so dreads old Sun that he lies hid and will not come out. What is to be done?"

潛躲不出 is to lie hidden and not come out; 如之奈何, "what is to be done about it", is a formal classical idiom, and it sounds thoroughly odd in this mouth. That is the point. Force having failed, he is asking for help, and he cannot even do it in his own register.

The Bodhisattva called the Guardian and said: "Go to the brink of the gorge and cry aloud:

叫一聲 is "give one call". Hold the two things side by side: a cudgel, sustained abuse and the churning of an entire gorge, against one shout. What Wukong could not do with any of the first three, the Bodhisattva does by having the creature called by its name.

'Third Prince Jade Dragon, son of Dragon King Aorun — come forth! The Bodhisattva of the Southern Sea is here.'

玉龍三太子, "Third Prince Jade Dragon", with 子 read zǐ — the name and rank the dragon has not heard spoken since he was condemned. He fought a nameless demon over a horse. He will answer to someone who knows exactly who he is.

Then he will come out."

他就出來了, "then out he will come". The flat certainty of it is the whole reproof.