黑松林失師 The Master Lost at Black Pine Wood
八戒道：「實不瞞哥哥說，自你回後，我與沙僧保師父前行，只見一座黑松林，師父下馬，教我化齋。我因許遠，無一個人家，辛苦了，略在草裡睡睡。不想沙僧別了師父，又來尋我。你曉得師父沒有坐性，他獨步林間玩景。出得林，見一座黃金寶塔放光，他只當寺院。不期塔下有個妖精，名喚黃袍，被他拿住。後邊我與沙僧回尋，止見白馬、行囊，不見師父。隨尋至洞口，與那怪廝殺。師父在洞，幸虧了一個救星。原是寶象國王第三個公主，被那怪攝來者。八戒道：「实不瞒哥哥说，自你回后，我与沙僧保师父前行，只见一座黑松林，师父下马，教我化斋。我因许远，无一个人家，辛苦了，略在草里睡睡。不想沙僧别了师父，又来寻我。你晓得师父没有坐性，他独步林间玩景。出得林，见一座黄金宝塔放光，他只当寺院。不期塔下有个妖精，名唤黄袍，被他拿住。后边我与沙僧回寻，止见白马、行囊，不见师父。随寻至洞口，与那怪厮杀。师父在洞，幸亏了一个救星。原是宝象国王第三个公主，被那怪摄来者。
逐句解 Line by line
Bajie said, "I will hide nothing from you, elder brother. After you had gone back, Sha Seng and I escorted our master onward, until we came upon a wood of black pines. There the master dismounted and bade me go and beg a meal.
Bajie now compresses everything that has happened since he was sent away into a single speech. 黑松林, Hēisōnglín, "Black Pine Wood," is where the master was taken. 化齋, huà zhāi, is to beg a vegetarian meal as alms — the errand that habitually gets Bajie out of trouble and everyone else into it.
Because I had gone so great a way and found not a single dwelling, I grew weary, and lay down a little while to sleep among the grass.
許遠, xǔ yuǎn, "such a distance." The nap in the grass is entirely characteristic, and he mentions it himself.
I had not reckoned that Sha Seng would leave the master and come out to look for me.
別了, bié le, took leave of; 尋, xún, to seek, to go looking for.
You know well that our master has no patience for sitting still: he walked out alone among the trees to take in the view.
坐性, zuò xìng, is the temper to sit still and stay put, which Tripitaka conspicuously lacks. (得 in 曉得 is the light de.)
Coming clear of the wood, he spied a pagoda of yellow gold blazing with light, and took it for nothing but a monastery.
The detail that does the damage: 只當, zhǐ dàng, "took it merely for," with 當 read dàng, "to regard as." A blazing golden pagoda looks like a monastery, and a monk walks straight in.
Little did he expect that beneath the tower dwelt a fiend, Yellow Robe by name, by whom he was seized and held.
黃袍, Huángpáo, "Yellow Robe," is this chapter's demon. Hold the name — he will turn out, some fifty passages from now, to be the star-lord Kui the Wood-Wolf, 奎木狼.
Coming back to search, Sha Seng and I found only the white horse and the baggage; of our master there was no sign.
行囊, xíng náng, the travelling packs — 行 read xíng, as it is throughout this chapter. The horse and the baggage still there, the master gone: the standard shape of an abduction in this book.
Following the trail to the mouth of the cave, we did battle with the fiend.
廝殺, sī shā, to fight and kill at close quarters — not skirmishing but grappling.
Our master, held within the cave, had the good fortune of one deliverer.
救星, jiù xīng, literally a "star of rescue," meaning a saving benefactor. The metaphor is idle here and will not be idle later: the chapter's deliverance really does come down to a star.
She proved to be the third princess of the King of Baoxiang, carried off by that same fiend.
寶象國, Bǎoxiàngguó, the Kingdom of Baoxiang. 攝來, shè lái, spirited away — the verb is for abduction by supernatural force, not by hand.
Bajie's narration folds everything that happened in his absence into one swift confession, and the teller colours every line of it. He opens by protesting that he will hide nothing, precisely because he intends, a few breaths later, to practise a calculated deceit. The recital is exact in its particulars — the black pinewood, the golden pagoda mistaken for a monastery, the fiend beneath the tower — so the listener is disarmed by its very fidelity.
Compressing an earlier episode into a returning traveller's report is standard practice in the vernacular novel, and the compression carries dramatic weight of its own, hurrying toward the plea Bajie has come to make. The pagoda "taken for a monastery" is a small, telling stroke: the pilgrims' piety is exactly the bait by which calamity draws Tripitaka in.