三藏詰問 The Monk's Confucian Doubt
三藏聞言道：「女菩薩，你語言差了。聖經云：『父母在，不遠遊，遊必有方。』你既有父母在堂，又與你招了女婿，有願心，教你男子還，便也罷，怎麼自家在山行走？又沒個侍兒隨從。這個是不遵婦道了。」那女子笑吟吟，忙陪俏語道：「師父，我丈夫在山北凹裡，帶幾個客子鋤田。這是奴奴煮的午飯，送與那些人吃的。只為五黃六月，無人使喚，父母又年老，所以親身來送。忽遇三位遠來，卻思父母好善，故將此飯齋僧，如不棄嫌，願表芹獻。」三藏闻言道：「女菩萨，你语言差了。圣经云：『父母在，不远游，游必有方。』你既有父母在堂，又与你招了女婿，有愿心，教你男子还，便也罢，怎么自家在山行走？又没个侍儿随从。这个是不遵妇道了。」那女子笑吟吟，忙陪俏语道：「师父，我丈夫在山北凹里，带几个客子锄田。这是奴奴煮的午饭，送与那些人吃的。只为五黄六月，无人使唤，父母又年老，所以亲身来送。忽遇三位远来，却思父母好善，故将此饭斋僧，如不弃嫌，愿表芹献。」
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this, Tripitaka said, "Lady Bodhisattva, your words are amiss.
For a moment the monk turns lawyer. 差 (chà) is "off, mistaken": your account does not add up. This is the discernment he is capable of, on display and working properly. It has about two pages left to live.
"The Sage's Classic says: 'While your parents live, do not journey far; and if you journey, have a fixed destination.'
Notice which book he reaches for. Tripitaka is a Buddhist monk, and under pressure he quotes Confucius — 父母在, 不遠遊, 遊必有方, "while your parents live, do not travel far; if you must travel, have a fixed destination", from the 里仁 chapter of the Analects. He calls it 聖經, the Sage's Classic. A Ming reader would have found nothing strange in this: the two traditions shared a moral vocabulary, and filial duty was common ground.
"Since your parents are alive at home and have taken in a son-in-law for you, if there was a vow to keep, then letting your husband fulfil it would have served well enough — so why are you roaming the mountains alone?
The objection is sharp and entirely fair — if a vow needed keeping, send the husband. 還 is huán again, "to discharge, repay", the same word used of settling a debt with the gods. 自家 is "on one's own"; 行走 takes 行 as xíng; the 子 of 男子 is the noun-forming zǐ.
"And with not so much as a maidservant in attendance."
And no maid with her. 侍兒 (shì ér) is an attendant girl, with 兒 as the full noun ér. A respectable woman of any standing did not walk out unaccompanied, so the missing chaperone is a second hole in the story — and he has found it.
"This is to flout the way proper to a wife."
婦道 (fù dào) is "the way proper to a wife", the whole code of conduct expected of a married woman. The charge is framed entirely in terms of propriety, which tells you what scale the elder is weighing her on. It is not "you might be a demon". It is "you are behaving improperly for a married woman".
The woman, smiling sweetly, hastened to answer with charming words: "Master, my husband is in a hollow on the mountain's north side, with a few hired hands, hoeing the fields.
She does not hesitate, and she does not over-explain. The husband is close by, on the north side of the hill, with a few hired hands. 笑吟吟 (xiào yín yín) is smiling steadily and brightly; 陪俏語 is answering with pretty, obliging talk. Two instances of 子 a few characters apart do different jobs: 女子 takes the noun-forming zǐ, 客子 the toneless suffix zi.
"This is the midday meal I cooked, to bring to those men to eat.
And here the food quietly changes purpose. A moment ago she had come out for no other reason than to feed monks; now it turns out to be her husband's workers' lunch. Nobody notices. The homely detail is doing its job so well — a wife carrying a hot meal out to the fields is the most ordinary sight in rural China — that the contradiction slides straight past. (那些人 points: nà.)
"It is only that, in the height of summer, there was no one to send, and my parents besides are old, so I have come to bring it myself.
五黃六月 (wǔ huáng liù yuè), the fifth and sixth months of the old calendar, is a set phrase for the worst of the summer heat, when the grain is yellowing and every pair of hands is out in the fields. It is the perfect answer to "why no servant?" — there is nobody to spare in the whole village. She has taken his second objection and dissolved it in a single idiom. 只為 takes 為 as wèi, "because".
"Chancing to meet you three from afar, and mindful of my parents' love of good works, I would give this food as alms to monks — and if you do not scorn it, I offer it as my humble gift."
She finishes on a flourish of modesty. 芹獻 (qín xiàn) is "an offering of parsley", from a tale in the 列子 about a peasant who found wild celery so delicious that he pressed it on his lord, to general disgust. Ever since it has meant a humble gift offered with more sincerity than value — the Chinese for "it isn't much, but". And she ties the gift back to her parents' piety, so that refusing it would slight not her but them. 將 is jiāng once more, fronting the object.
Put to the test, the monk reaches not for Buddhist doctrine but for the Analects, and judges the woman by 婦道, the conduct proper to a wife. His objection is genuinely acute — a respectable married woman does not roam a wild mountain alone, and the missing maid makes it worse. For the length of this exchange his discernment is exactly equal to the danger in front of him.
The demon's recovery is the real display. Every specific doubt gets a specific, homely answer: husband on the far slope, no servants to spare in high summer, parents too old to send. Under pressure the fabrication grows more plausible rather than less, which is the mark of an intelligence reading its interrogator and reassuring him point by point. She even gets away with a straight contradiction in the middle of it — the food she came out expressly to give to monks turns out, four lines later, to be her husband's lunch. Nobody asks.
The exchange stages the chapter's deepest irony. Tripitaka's virtues — his courtesy, his learning, his moral seriousness — are the surface the demon writes her lie on. She could not have deceived a cynic. She deceives him because he is exactly what he ought to be.