月餘平穩 浮屠山至 A Month of Quiet, and Pagoda Mountain Comes in Sight
三眾進西路途，有個月平穩。行過了烏斯藏界，猛擡頭見一座高山。三藏停鞭勒馬道：「悟空、悟能，前面山高，須索仔細仔細。」八戒道：「沒事。這山喚做浮屠山，山中有一個烏巢禪師，在此修行，老豬也曾會他。」三藏道：「他有些甚麼勾當？」八戒道：「他倒也有些道行。他曾勸我跟他修行，我不曾去罷了。」師徒們說著話，不多時，到了山上。好山！但見那：三众进西路途，有个月平稳。行过了乌斯藏界，猛抬头见一座高山。三藏停鞭勒马道：「悟空、悟能，前面山高，须索仔细仔细。」八戒道：「没事。这山唤做浮屠山，山中有一个乌巢禅师，在此修行，老猪也曾会他。」三藏道：「他有些甚么勾当？」八戒道：「他倒也有些道行。他曾劝我跟他修行，我不曾去罢了。」师徒们说着话，不多时，到了山上。好山！但见那：
逐句解 Line by line
The three of them went forward on the westward road, and for a month or so all was quiet.
有個月平穩, "some month of quiet." The novel disposes of thirty days in five characters, and will keep doing this for the rest of the book — the journey is long, and only the interruptions get narrated.
They passed the borders of Ü-Tsang, and looking up of a sudden saw a high mountain.
烏斯藏 transcribes Ü-Tsang, the central provinces of Tibet, and 藏 is zàng here, not cáng. The geography is roughly right and completely unvisited: the author knew the name and nothing else, which is true of most places on this itinerary.
Sanzang reined in his horse and said: "Wukong, Wuneng — the mountain ahead is high. We must go carefully, very carefully."
勒馬 takes 勒 as lè, to rein in. 須索 is "must needs," an idiom off the Yuan stage. And 仔細, with 仔 read zǐ, is doubled — careful, very careful — which is Sanzang's entire character in two words repeated.
Bajie said: "It is nothing. This mountain is called Pagoda Mountain,
浮屠 transcribes buddha and, by extension, stūpa, the reliquary tower — which is why the same two characters give both "Buddha" and "pagoda," and why the mountain is Pagoda Mountain.
and in it there lives a Crow's Nest Chan Master, who practises here. Old Hog has met him before."
烏巢禪師, the Crow's Nest Chan Master, named for the nest of twigs he lives in — a detail the reader is about to be shown rather than told. 老豬 again: Bajie has acquired his own honorific and is using it freely.
Sanzang said: "What is his occupation?"
勾當 takes 勾 as gòu and 當 as dàng: business, line of work. There is a faint suspicion in the question, and Sanzang will ask it in the same tone of every holy man they meet from here to India.
Bajie said: "He has some attainment in the Way. He once urged me to follow him in cultivation, but I did not go, and there was an end of it."
Two readings of 行, eight characters apart, and the sense decides each. In 道行, spiritual attainment, it is héng; in 修行, to cultivate the practice, it is xíng. Then 罷了, "and there was an end of it" — Bajie summarising the largest missed opportunity of his life in two characters and moving on.
As master and disciples talked, they came in no long time up onto the mountain. A fine mountain! Look at it:
好山, "a fine mountain," and 但見那：, "and what met the eye was this" — the storyteller's two-part cue for a landscape poem. Both stay with the prose.
On the mountain's south are green pines and dark junipers; on the mountain's north, willows in leaf and peaches in flower.
檜 is guì, the Chinese juniper. The poem opens with the south-slope-and-north-slope pairing that opens most mountain descriptions: sunny side, shady side, and a different set of trees on each.
A clamour and a chattering: the mountain birds answer one another;
鬧聒聒 takes 聒 as guō, not guā — a word that means noise and sounds like it. The three-character opening with a doubled second syllable is the signature of this metre, and the next three units all follow it.
a whirling and a wheeling: the immortal cranes fly up together.
This unit and the one before it are the two halves of a matched pair, joined by ；. The house convention keeps such pairs split, so each half stands as its own line of verse rather than being run together.
A fragrance, thick and sweet: the flowers in a thousand hues;
馥馥, richly fragrant — another doubled syllable, and the pattern holds.
a green so deep it darkens: the wild grasses in ten thousand kinds.
冉冉 is a lovely word: colour spreading and deepening by degrees, and by extension time slipping past. It is used of dusk falling and of years going by, and here it is used of grass.
Below the ravine are waters running green; before the cliff are clouds of blessing in drifts and clusters.
The poem returns to full seven-character lines and matches them part for part: 澗下 against 崖前, below the ravine against before the cliff, and 滔滔 against 朵朵, water rolling against cloud clustering.
Truly the scene is a place of rare seclusion, still, with never a traveller in sight.
寂然不見往來人 — still, with never a traveller in sight. The description ends on an absence, and three travellers are standing there looking at it.
A month of travel in five characters, the borders of Ü-Tsang crossed in a clause, and the second half of the chapter opens. The exchange on the road is entirely characteristic: Sanzang sees a high mountain and wants to be careful; Bajie says it is nothing, names the mountain, names the hermit who lives on it, and mentions in passing that the hermit once invited him to become a disciple and he turned it down. 我不曾去罷了 — I did not go, and there was an end of it. The Crow's Nest Chan Master is about to hand Sanzang the Heart Sutra.
The landscape poem is built on a three-character opening with a doubled syllable — 鬧聒聒, 舞翩翩, 香馥馥, 青冉冉, a clamour, a whirling, a fragrance, a green — set in matched pairs joined by ；, which the house convention keeps as separate lines. It closes on 寂然不見往來人, still, with never a traveller in sight, which is the poet's way of pointing out that somebody has just arrived.