變虎之災 The Transformation
那怪接水在手，縱起身來，走上前，使個「黑眼定身法」。念了咒語，將一口水望唐僧噴去，叫聲：「變！」那長老的真身，隱在殿上，真個變作一隻斑斕猛虎。此時君臣肉眼觀看，那隻虎生得：那怪接水在手，纵起身来，走上前，使个「黑眼定身法」。念了咒语，将一口水望唐僧喷去，叫声：「变！」那长老的真身，隐在殿上，真个变作一只斑斓猛虎。此时君臣肉眼观看，那只虎生得：
逐句解 Line by line
The demon took the water in hand, sprang up, stepped forward, and worked a "Black-Eye Body-Fixing Spell."
黑眼定身法 is a named enchantment, a "body-fixing" method that pins the victim's shape in place. 那 is the pointing nà.
He recited the incantation, took a mouthful of water and spat it toward Tripitaka, crying: "Change!"
In 將一口水 the 將 marking the object is jiāng. Spell, mouthful of water, one spat word: this is the standard machinery of transformation throughout the novel, and it is being used here on the one person in the room who has no defence against it.
The Elder's true body was hidden away there upon the hall, and in its place appeared — in very truth — a fierce, brindled tiger.
長老 takes 長 as zhǎng. Do not skip 真身隱在殿上: his real body is hidden, not destroyed. The tiger is an illusion laid over an intact self, which is both why rescue remains possible and why the scene is so painful — he is entirely present and entirely unrecognised. 那 is pointing nà.
Now, as king and courtiers looked on with their eyes of flesh, that tiger was formed thus:
The lead-in to the descriptive verse. 觀看 takes 觀 as guān; 生得 takes 得 as de. The 肉眼 tag is the reminder that everything catalogued below is what a deluded eye supplies. 那 is pointing nà.
White-browed and round of head, patterned of body, with eyes like lightning;
The description opens on head and eyes — 電目, "lightning eyes," fixing the ferocity at once.
four hooves straight and jutting;
A short irregular line (四隻蹄) breaks the rhythm; 崢嶸, towering and rugged, the word used earlier of the demon's handsome frame, here gives even the paws a jagged menace.
twenty claws, hooked and keen.
Paired with the short line before it. The exact count — 二十爪, twenty claws, five to a foot — gives the horror an arithmetic it does not need and is the better for.
Saw-teeth ringing its maw, sharp ears joined to its brows.
鋸牙, saw-teeth, and 尖耳, pointed ears, carry on down the head.
Fierce and grim, stout as a great cat in shape; savage and mighty, like a tawny bull-calf.
Two similes that reach for the farmyard rather than the wild: 大貓, a great cat, and 黃犢, a tawny bull-calf. Sizing a tiger against a calf is a countryman's measure, and it works.
Stiff whiskers straight as inserted silver wires; a barbed tongue, ruddy-red, breathing a foul vapor.
銀條 likens the stiff whiskers to silver rods; 騂騂, reddish, colours the tongue; and 噴惡氣 gives the animal a breath of active malevolence.
Truly a fierce brindled beast — gust upon gust its dreadful power blew through the treasure-hall.
The closing couplet pulls back to the room. The beast's 威風, its awful force, blows through the throne-hall itself — tying the monster to the court it has been conjured into.
This is the chapter's lowest point. The holy pilgrim, the human centre of the entire quest, is reduced in front of a throne to a dumb hunted animal — the exact inversion of what he is, and the literal enactment of the slander that he is "really" a tiger. The scene stages, with cruel economy, how vulnerable the sacred becomes when its guardians are elsewhere.
The crucial line is 真身隱在殿上 — his true body is only hidden, not undone. The transformation is an illusion cast over an intact self. That keeps rescue possible and sharpens the pathos at the same time: Tripitaka is wholly there and wholly unseen.
The tiger description itself is entirely conventional, assembled from the standard inventory of ferocity — lightning eyes, saw-teeth, hooked claws — and its conventionality is the point. The court sees a perfectly ordinary monster where a saint is standing. This catalogue is what the 肉眼, the eye of flesh, supplies instead of the truth.