袈裟出匣 The Cassock Unfolded
你看他不由分說，急急的走了去，把個包袱解開，早有霞光迸迸，尚有兩層油紙裹定。去了紙，取出袈裟，抖開時，紅光滿室，彩氣盈庭。眾僧見了，無一個不心歡口讚，真個好袈裟。上頭有：你看他不由分说，急急的走了去，把个包袱解开，早有霞光迸迸，尚有两层油纸裹定。去了纸，取出袈裟，抖开时，红光满室，彩气盈庭。众僧见了，无一个不心欢口赞，真个好袈裟。上头有：
逐句解 Line by line
See how, without letting another word be said, he hurried off,
不由分說, "allowing no argument." Sanzang's entire speech — the maxim, the chain of consequence, the warning of death — is answered by a departing back.
undid the bundle — and at once a roseate radiance came bursting out, though two thicknesses of oiled paper still held it bound.
霞光 is the light of sunset cloud; 迸迸 (bèngbèng) is bursting, spurting out. Note the concessive: 尚有兩層油紙裹定, "and still two layers of oiled paper held it fast." The light is escaping through the wrapping.
The paper away, he drew out the cassock; and when he shook it open, a red light filled the room and a coloured vapour brimmed the courtyard.
滿室 and 盈庭 widen the radiance from the room to the court, until the whole monastery stands in it. The verb 抖開 ("shake open") is the very one used a page ago of the eight hundred robes on their ropes — the same action, and nothing whatever the same.
Not one of the monks who saw it failed to rejoice in his heart and praise it with his mouth. Truly a fine cassock. Upon it were these:
無一個不 — the double negative counts them, man by man. The cold laughter of the previous passage is never mentioned again; the novel simply lets it go, which is crueller than recording a retraction.
A thousand cunning subtleties of hanging pearl; ten thousand rarities of Buddha-jewel, close-clustered.
攢 is cuán, "massed together" — the same graph and the same reading that clustered the Eight Treasures on the old abbot's shoes, and an altogether different order of thing. 佛寶, the jewels of the Buddha.
Above and below, dragon-beard threads spread out in coloured damask; tūla down on all four sides, with brocade running the hem.
龍鬚, "dragon's beard," is a fine filament woven into matting and cloth. 鋪 is pū, "to spread out." 兜羅 transliterates Skt. tūla, the soft cotton-floss of the sūtras — a stuff proper to a Buddha-realm, not to a wardrobe.
Hang it on the body — hill-sprite and water-goblin perish from that hour; wear it on the back — the demons of wood and stone go down to the Yellow Springs.
魍魎 (wǎngliǎng) and 魑魅 (chīmèi) are the paired names for the whole tribe of mountain and marsh spirits; 黃泉, the Yellow Springs, is the Chinese underworld. The cassock is not a garment but an armament — which is precisely what a house of eight hundred robes has no means of perceiving.
Transformed immortals of Heaven wrought it with their own hands; and were he not a true monk, no man would dare to wear it.
托化 (tuōhuà), to take form by transformation. The last line is the poem's judgement and the chapter's sentence: 不是真僧不敢穿. Within the hour, a monk of two hundred and seventy years will weep because he cannot wear it, and the wearing will kill him.
The cassock is described three times over in this chapter and never once as clothing. Here it is light — 霞光迸迸, 紅光滿室, 彩氣盈庭 — light that escapes through two layers of oiled paper before the wrapping is undone. Guanyin's gift, given to Sanzang in chapter twelve at the emperor's court, has been travelling in a bundle on a monkey's shoulder ever since. Its first appearance in five chapters is a small, unheralded epiphany in a provincial courtyard, and the men who witness it are the men who will burn for it.
The regulated verse is careful to say what the cassock does: it annihilates the sprites of hill and marsh; it sends demons to the Yellow Springs. And then, in the last line, it names its condition — 不是真僧不敢穿, "were he not a true monk, none would dare to wear it." The line reads at first as a boast about the garment. It is in fact a warning about the wearer, and it will be tested twice before the chapter closes: once by an old man who wants to put it on for a single day, and once by a bear-spirit who steals it to hold a Buddha-robe festival. Neither is a 真僧. Both are destroyed by the attempt — and the second, as chapter seventeen will show, is destroyed only because Guanyin herself comes down to take him.