洞中悲啼 The Captive and the Woman
且不言他三人戰鬥。卻說那長老在洞裡悲啼，思量他那徒弟，眼中流淚道：「悟能啊，不知你在那個村中逢了善友，貪著齋供？悟淨啊，你又不知在那裡尋他，可能得會？豈知我遇妖魔，在此受難？幾時得會你們，脫了大難，早赴靈山？」正當悲啼煩惱，忽見那洞內走出一個婦人來，扶著定魂樁，叫道：「那長老，你從何來？為何被他縛在此處？」且不言他三人战斗。却说那长老在洞里悲啼，思量他那徒弟，眼中流泪道：「悟能啊，不知你在那个村中逢了善友，贪著斋供？悟净啊，你又不知在那里寻他，可能得会？岂知我遇妖魔，在此受难？几时得会你们，脱了大难，早赴灵山？」正当悲啼烦恼，忽见那洞内走出一个妇人来，扶著定魂桩，叫道：「那长老，你从何来？为何被他缚在此处？」
逐句解 Line by line
But leave aside the combat of the three. The elder, meanwhile, wept within the cave, and thinking of his disciples let the tears fall: 'Wuneng, ah — I know not in what village you have fallen among good friends and grown greedy for their almsfood; Wujing, ah — you too know not where to seek him, and can you even find him? Little did I think to fall in with a fiend and suffer this ordeal here. When shall I meet you again, escape this great affliction, and reach the Spirit Mountain betimes?'
且不言 / 卻說 cut the storyteller's camera from the battle to the captive's interior. The lament apportions pathos in parallel apostrophes to 悟能 (Eight Rules) and 悟淨 (Sha Monk); 貪著齋供 pins on Pig his besetting fault, gluttony, with 著 the verb zhuó (Buddhist 貪著, "to cleave to, be attached"). The two 那 in his questions are interrogative nǎ ("in which village," "where"). 受難 / 大難 take 難 as nàn (an ordeal); 靈山 is Gṛdhrakūṭa, Vulture Peak, the journey's goal. The four rhetorical questions sustain the elegiac register.
Just as he grieved and fretted, of a sudden a woman came forth from within the cave, and steadying herself against the soul-fixing post, called out: 'You there, elder — whence do you come? Why has he bound you in this place?'
The entrance interrupts the lament at its height (正當...忽見). 定魂樁 ("soul-settling stake") is the post to which Tripitaka is lashed — a lurid furnishing suited to the ogre's lair; 扶著 uses 著 as durative zhe. Her blunt interrogation (從何來 / 為何被縛; 為 the interrogative wèi) opens the recognition scene that will supply the chapter's engine, the letter home.
With a single tale-teller's turn (且不言...卻說...) the chapter pivots from the noise of battle to the stillness of the cell, and from action to interiority. Tripitaka's lament is one of the novel's set arias of self-pity, but it is finely characterized: even in extremity he cannot help imputing to Eight Rules the very appetite — 貪著齋供, a craving for almsfood — that has so often endangered the group, while to Sha Monk he grants only bafflement. The four unanswered questions build the pathos and, structurally, hold the scene open for an interruption.
That interruption is the woman's abrupt appearance from within the cave. Her plainness of speech — whence, why, bound how — is the idiom of recognition drama: she does not yet know who he is, and he does not yet know that she is no demon but a fellow captive. The 定魂樁 to which he is tied names, with grim aptness, the apparatus of the lair; and her two questions launch the exchange from which the whole remaining machinery of the chapter — the letter, the embassy to Baoxiang, the summoning of the disciples to court — will unfold.