弼馬溫之怒 洞口初戰 The Bimawen Insult; the First Battle
那怪聞言笑道：「你原來是那鬧天宮的弼馬溫麼？」行者最惱的是人叫他弼馬溫，聽見這一聲，心中大怒，罵道：「你這賊怪！偷了袈裟不還，倒傷老爺。不要走，看棍。」那黑漢側身躲過，綽長槍，劈手來迎。兩家這場好殺：那怪闻言笑道：「你原来是那闹天宫的弼马温么？」行者最恼的是人叫他弼马温，听见这一声，心中大怒，骂道：「你这贼怪！偷了袈裟不还，倒伤老爷。不要走，看棍。」那黑汉侧身躲过，绰长枪，劈手来迎。两家这场好杀：
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this, the fiend laughed. "So you are that Bimawen who made havoc in Heaven?"
弼馬溫, Bimawen, Keeper of the Imperial Horses — the joke office Heaven once used to buy the Pilgrim off. The fiend has been listening to all thirty-two couplets and has picked out of them the one title their author carefully did not mention.
Now nothing angered the Pilgrim so much as to be called Bimawen. At the sound of the word his heart swelled with fury, and he cursed him: "You thieving fiend!
最惱的是: the narrator states the weakness flatly, the way a field guide states a fact about an animal. 心中 reads zhōng.
You steal a cassock and will not return it, and then you affront your elder into the bargain. Do not run — mind the rod!"
不還: the tone of 不 is computed from the dictionary tone of 還 as hái, second tone, and so stays bù — even though the character is being read huán here, to give back. 老爺 is once again the Pilgrim referring to himself.
The black fellow twisted aside and let it pass, snatched up his long spear, and came on with a quick hand to meet him. It was a fine fight between the two of them:
綽 is chāo, to snatch up, as settled earlier in the chapter; 長槍 takes cháng. 劈手 is with a hand that splits the air. What follows is a battle-賦 in seven units.
The As-You-Will rod, the black-tasselled spear: the two of them at the cave mouth vaunting their hardihood.
The 賦 opens by naming the two weapons and nothing else, the way a playbill names its actors. 逞剛強: 強 reads qiáng, and carries the -ang rhyme that runs to the last character of the poem.
A thrust that parts the breast, a cleaving at the face; a stroke that lands on the arm, a wound aimed full at the head.
分心, 劈臉, 著臂, 照頭 are four phrases of aim, each one a verb governing a body part. That makes 著 the full verb here, zhuó, to touch or alight on — parallel to 照, to aim at — and neither the continuous zhe nor the goal-reaching zháo.
This one flings his rod crosswise with a treacherous hand; that one twirls his straight and drives three quick spear-thrusts.
陰棍手 is an underhand stroke of the rod. The couplet is built on 橫 against 直, crosswise against straight.
A white tiger climbing the hill puts forth a claw; a yellow dragon lying athwart the road turns its body in haste.
The two beasts are the fighters seen heraldically: white tiger of the west, yellow dragon of the centre. Neither of them is a monkey and neither of them is a bear.
They spout coloured mists, they belch a hair-fine light: two fiend-immortals not to be measured.
不可量 — 量 is the verb, liáng, to gauge or take the measure of, in line with the ruling on 量於宇宙 back in chapter 14. The tone of 不 is computed from the character's dictionary tone liàng and is unaffected.
The one is the Sage Equal to Heaven, cultivating the right; the other the Great King of Black Wind, a spirit come to its perfection.
修正 set against 成精: one of them cultivates the right, the other has merely ripened into a spirit. That antithesis is the whole moral architecture of the chapter — and the very next line is going to knock it down.
This strife in the mountains, this place of contention — all for a cassock, and neither of them good.
相爭 takes xiāng; 只為 takes wèi, on account of. Then 各不良 — neither of them any good. The narrator, having called one of them a sage two lines earlier, declines to take his side.
The bear-fiend has sat through thirty-two couplets of self-praise and drawn from them the single conclusion guaranteed to start a fight. Not 齊天大聖, Great Sage Equal to Heaven, which the poem supplies twice — but 弼馬溫, stablehand, which it never supplies at all, being the title Heaven fobbed him off with and the one thing he has spent the entire recitation talking around. It is remarkably shrewd listening for a monster, and it works instantly.
The battle-賦 then does something its subject would never have authorised. It sets 修正齊天聖 against 成精黑大王 in a perfect antithesis of the reformed against the unregenerate — and in the very next line throws both away: 只為袈裟各不良. All for a cassock, and neither of them good. The judgement falls on the monkey exactly as heavily as on the bear, and it is the narrator who delivers it, not any character.