遇難神僧想悟能 The Holy Monk in His Calamity
旁邊擁上七八個綁縛手，將唐僧拿去，好便似鷹拿燕雀，索綁繩纏。這的是苦命江流思行者，遇難神僧想悟能。道聲：「徒弟啊！不知你在那山擒怪，何處降妖，我卻被魔頭拿來，遭此毒害，幾時再得相見？好苦啊！你們若早些兒來，還救得我命；若十分遲了，斷然不能保矣。」一邊嗟嘆，一邊淚落如雨。旁边拥上七八个绑缚手，将唐僧拿去，好便似鹰拿燕雀，索绑绳缠。这的是苦命江流思行者，遇难神僧想悟能。道声：「徒弟啊！不知你在那山擒怪，何处降妖，我却被魔头拿来，遭此毒害，几时再得相见？好苦啊！你们若早些儿来，还救得我命；若十分迟了，断然不能保矣。」一边嗟叹，一边泪落如雨。
逐句解 Line by line
From the side seven or eight of the binding-men crowded up and carried the Tang Monk off, for all the world as a hawk carries a swallow, and trussed him with rope and wound him about with cord.
綁縛手, "binding-hands," is a job description: the cave keeps men whose office is to tie people up. 好便似鷹拿燕雀 takes 似 as sì; 將唐僧拿去 takes the disposal 將 as jiāng.
This is indeed: bitter-fated River Float thinking upon the Pilgrim; the holy monk in his calamity longing for Wuneng.
The second untagged parallel couplet of this chapter to stand inside prose, and it is treated as the first was: v:false, prose, no couplet flag, and the passage keeps three chips. 遇難 takes 難 as nàn, calamity, against the nán of 功行難 four passages back. 江流, River Float, is the monk's infant name.
He cried out, "Disciples! I know not on what mountain you are catching monsters, in what place subduing fiends,
在那山擒怪 — the interrogative nǎ, parallel with 何處. 降妖 takes 降 as xiáng, "to subdue," not jiàng, "to descend." The Tang Monk, tied to a post, imagines his disciples doing precisely what they are in fact doing: beating an empty skin.
while I am taken by the demon chief and come to this cruel pass. When shall we look upon one another again?
魔頭, the demon chief. 再得相見 takes 得 as dé and 相 as xiāng, the reciprocal.
Bitter indeed! If you come betimes, you may yet save my life; if you are very late, I am past all saving."
還救得我命, potential dé. The calculation is a monk's: not "come and rescue me" but "come early enough and it will be possible." 斷然不能保矣 ends on the literary particle, which is how this master talks when he is most frightened.
So he sighed and lamented; and all the while his tears fell like rain.
一邊嗟嘆，一邊淚落如雨. The chapter has arrived where its opening gāthā said it need never go: at a man calling on someone else to save him.
A hundred and thirteen graphs, and the chapter's cruelest joke is structural. Bound to the post, Sanzang calls on his disciples and imagines them 在那山擒怪，何處降妖 — somewhere on some mountain, catching monsters, subduing fiends. They are in fact a few hundred paces away, beating a tiger-skin spread over a rock.
The passage should be read against the poem that opened the chapter. 既然皆己心，何用別人說: if everything is one's own mind, what need of another man's telling? Twenty-five hundred graphs later the man to whom that gāthā was attributed is weeping at a post and reckoning how soon someone else must arrive if he is to live. The novel does not point this out. It simply prints the couplet — 苦命江流思行者，遇難神僧想悟能 — and lets the two verbs, 思 and 想, do the work.