Sanzang was greatly pleased, and called out: "Squire Gao, fetch an incense table, that we may use it."

香案, an incense table. Sanzang's first act on receiving a disciple is a ritual one, and it is not aimed at the disciple at all — it is aimed at the Bodhisattva who sent him.

Old Gao hastened to carry one out. Sanzang washed his hands, burned incense, bowed towards the south, and said: "How much we owe the Bodhisattva's holy grace."

望南禮拜, bowing towards the south — towards Potalaka, Guanyin's island. 聖恩, holy grace, is the vocabulary of an imperial pardon, borrowed here for a Bodhisattva's favour. The two systems keep leaking into each other, and nobody in the book seems to notice.

The several elders added incense too and made their bows with him.

The 老兒 take the little suffix, 兒 as er. Worth noting that they join in and burn incense without being asked to.

The worship done, Sanzang went up and sat in state in the hall, and bade Wukong loose the fiend's cords.

上廳高坐, to take the high seat in the hall. It is the posture of a master receiving a disciple and also, exactly, of a magistrate opening court. 教 is the causative jiào, to have someone do something.

The Pilgrim shook his body once, drew the hair back into himself, and the bonds fell away of their own accord.

其縛自解, in classical Chinese: and his bonds untied themselves. The rope was a hair all along, and the hair goes home.

The fiend bowed again before Sanzang and asked to follow him westward.

從新 is a variant of 重新, afresh. The first bow was to a stranger in a hall. This one is to a master, and the difference is the whole ceremony.

He bowed also to the Pilgrim, and taking him for elder brother as the one who had entered first, he called him thereafter Elder Brother.

以先進者為兄, whoever entered first is the elder brother. Seniority runs by date of ordination, not by age or by strength — a detail that will supply eighty chapters of resentment. 為 is wéi in both halves, and 稱 is chēng.

Sanzang said: "Since you follow me in the good fruit and would be my disciple, I shall give you a religious name, that we may call you by it morning and evening."

善果, the good fruit: the result that ripens out of good action, and by extension the religious life itself. 法名 is a name in the Dharma, the one you get when the old life is over.

He said: "Master, the Bodhisattva has already laid her hand on my crown and given me the precepts and a name. I am called Zhu Wuneng, Awakened to Power."

摩頂受戒 is the laying of a hand on the crown of the head at the conferring of the precepts — the physical gesture that makes the vow real. The name 悟能, Awakened to Power, was given him by the Bodhisattva and slots neatly beside 悟空, Awakened to Emptiness. He has been carrying it for years and this is the first time anyone has asked.

Sanzang laughed. "Good, good. Your elder brother is called Wukong, and you are called Wuneng. Truly you are of one lineage within my gate."

宗派 is a lineage, a branch of a school. Sanzang is delighted to discover that Guanyin has been quietly building him a generation of disciples with matching names, without ever mentioning it to him.

Wuneng said: "Master, when I received the Bodhisattva's precepts I cut off the five pungent roots and the three forbidden meats,

五葷 are the five pungent roots — garlic, onions and their relatives — which Buddhist practice forbids because they are held to inflame the appetites. The 三厭 are the three abominations of Daoist abstinence: the wild goose, the dog and the black fish. That the two lists come from two different religions is not a slip. It is how this novel's religion actually works.

and in my father-in-law's house I kept the fast and abstained from flesh, and never once tasted meat.

持齋把素 again, and the repetition is the point: it is true. He kept the fast right through the marriage, in a house that had every reason to expect otherwise.

Now that I have met my master, may I break my fast?"

And so to the question the whole passage has been walking towards, asked with the guilelessness that is his signature and his defence: 我開了齋罷 — now may I break my fast?

Sanzang said: "You may not, you may not. Since you do not eat the five pungents nor the three forbidden meats, I shall give you a second name, and call you Bajie — Eight Rules."

八戒 is the Eight Prohibitions, the eight precepts a lay Buddhist takes on for a fast-day. Sanzang has turned a request for dinner into a name, which is the most economical rebuke anybody delivers in this novel.

The Idiot said gladly: "I shall obey my master's command." And so he was also called Zhu Bajie.

歡歡喜喜: delighted. Read the sequence again — he asked to eat meat, was refused, and was handed a name commemorating the refusal, and he is delighted. From this point on it is the narrator, and not only Wukong, who calls him 獃子, the Idiot.