逐一查點 The Roll Called
慌得個眾僧哭道:「師公已撞殺了,又不見袈裟,怎生是好?」行者道:「想是汝等盜藏起也。都出來,開具花名手本,等老孫逐一查點。」那上下房的院主,將本寺和尚、頭陀、幸童、道人盡行開具手本二張,大小人等共計二百三十名。行者請師父高坐,他卻一一從頭唱名搜檢,都要解放衣襟,分明點過,更無袈裟。又將那各房頭搬搶出去的箱籠物件,從頭細細尋遍,那裡得有蹤跡。三藏心中煩惱,懊恨行者不盡,卻坐在上面念動那咒。行者撲的跌倒在地,抱著頭,十分難禁,只教:「莫念,莫念,管尋還了袈裟。」慌得个众僧哭道:「师公已撞杀了,又不见袈裟,怎生是好?」行者道:「想是汝等盗藏起也。都出来,开具花名手本,等老孙逐一查点。」那上下房的院主,将本寺和尚、头陀、幸童、道人尽行开具手本二张,大小人等共计二百三十名。行者请师父高坐,他却一一从头唱名搜检,都要解放衣襟,分明点过,更无袈裟。又将那各房头搬抢出去的箱笼物件,从头细细寻遍,那里得有踪迹。三藏心中烦恼,懊恨行者不尽,却坐在上面念动那咒。行者扑的跌倒在地,抱著头,十分难禁,只教:「莫念,莫念,管寻还了袈裟。」
逐句解 Line by line
The monks were thrown into a panic and wept. "Our Grand Master has dashed himself dead, and still there is no cassock. What is to be done?"
慌得 takes the neutral de. Their grief is stated in one clause and its cause in the next: the master is dead, and the cassock is still missing. The conjunction is 又, "and moreover."
The Pilgrim said, "I suppose you have stolen it and hidden it away. Come out, all of you. Draw up a register of names and hand it in, and let old Sun check you off one by one."
盜藏起 — here 藏 is cáng, "to hide," not the zàng of the Tang monk's name. 花名手本: a huāmíng register was the standard document of Ming officialdom, a nominal roll submitted to a superior. The Great Sage of Heaven is conducting a bureaucratic audit.
The priors of the upper and lower quarters drew up two sheets, entering the monastery's monks, its ascetics, its pages and its lay servants;
頭陀 the ascetics, 幸童 the favoured pages, 道人 the lay servants — the whole establishment enumerated by rank, exactly as it was seated at dinner.
great and small, the persons came to two hundred and thirty in all.
The census of the fire-plot passage returns as an official total: 二百三十名. Two hundred and thirty. The number has now been given three times, and each time it has meant something different — a community, a conspiracy, a payroll.
The Pilgrim seated his master in the high place, and himself called each name in turn from the head of the roll and searched them,
唱名搜檢, to call the roll and search. Sanzang is placed 高坐, in the seat of the presiding magistrate, and does not object.
every man to loosen his robe and open it, and all were checked in plain sight — and there was no cassock.
解放衣襟, to loosen and open the front of the robe. The monks are stripped and searched in their own courtyard, one at a time, by the creature who burned it.
Then he took the chests and boxes and goods that each quarter had snatched out of the fire, and went through them from the beginning, minutely, and everywhere — and where was there any trace of it?
那裡得有蹤跡: the first 那 is nà, the second nǎ — "where would there be any trace?" The rhetorical question is the narrator's, and it tells us the search is futile before the monks know it.
Sanzang's heart was full of vexation, and his resentment of the Pilgrim knew no end; and sitting up in the high place, he began to recite that spell.
懊恨, rankling resentment. 那咒 is the Tight-Fillet Spell. Note the sequence: no cassock, therefore the spell. Sanzang has watched a man kill himself and two hundred and thirty men be stripped in the ashes, and what moves him to act is a missing coat.
The Pilgrim fell flat upon the ground, clutching his head, unable to bear it, crying only, "Do not recite, do not recite! I will see the cassock found and returned!"
抱著頭 takes zhe. 十分難禁, unbearable past enduring. 管尋還了袈裟 — 還 is huán. The promise is extracted under torture, and he will keep it.
The scene is a magistrate's inquiry, staged in a burnt courtyard. A nominal roll is drawn up — 花名手本, the standard document of a Ming yamen — the master is seated 高坐 in the presiding chair, and two hundred and thirty men are called by name, made to open their robes, and searched in the ashes of their house on the morning their abbot killed himself. Then the boxes they saved from the fire are emptied and gone through. There is no cassock, because a bear took it at midnight, and nobody has thought to look outside the walls.
What the passage is really about is the fillet. Sanzang, finding nothing, recites the spell — and the novel gives him no other motive in the entire scene. He has just walked through 敗壁破牆 sighing without ceasing; he has seen a corpse against a wall; and it is the absence of the robe that makes him reach for the one instrument of pain he possesses. Wukong drops, clutches his skull, and promises. It is worth setting this beside chapter fourteen, where Guanyin gave Sanzang the spell precisely because his disciple could not otherwise be governed. The instrument works. It is not, on this evidence, in the hands of a better creature than the one it governs.