行者自陳 Pilgrim Declares Himself
你看那二魔拿著個假葫蘆，還像前番，雄糾糾，氣昂昂，走出門高呼道：「你是那裡人氏，敢在此間吆喝？」行者道：「你認不得我：你看那二魔拿著个假葫芦，还像前番，雄纠纠，气昂昂，走出门高呼道：「你是那里人氏，敢在此间吆喝？」行者道：「你认不得我：
逐句解 Line by line
See how the second fiend, gripping a false gourd and looking just as he had before, all bristling and blustering, strode out the door and called aloud: “Where do you hail from, that you dare bawl here?”
A dense stroke of scene-painting. 假葫蘆 — the "false gourd" — is the counterfeit at the heart of the ruse. The set doublet 雄糾糾，氣昂昂 ("bristling with vigor, swelling with bluster") is stock martial description. Note the two readings of 那: deictic 那二魔 (nà, "that second fiend") but interrogative 那裡人氏 (nǎ, "from where"). 此間 is "here, this place."
Pilgrim said: “You don’t know me:
認不得 (rèn bu de) is the negative potential of 認得, "to recognize" — here 得 is the toneless potential complement de, not the verb dé. The colon launches the self-declaration verse that follows.
My home is set on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit; my ancestral seat, the Water-Curtain Cave.
祖貫 (zǔguàn) is one’s ancestral registry or native place. Wukong opens the conventional 自報家門 — the hero’s pre-combat recitation of lineage — with his origins at 花果山 and the 水簾洞.
It was only for the uproar I raised in the Palace of Heaven that for so long I laid down my striving and strife.
鬧天宮 is the Havoc in Heaven of the early chapters. 罷爭競 (bà zhēngjìng) — "gave over contending" — alludes to the long punishment under the Mountain of Five Phases that followed; 為 is here the causal preposition wèi, "because of."
Now, having by fortune escaped calamity, I have cast off the Daoist’s way and taken up the monk’s employ.
脫災 is the release from that imprisonment. 棄道從僧 (qì dào cóng sēng) — "forsaking the Dao to follow the Sangha" — names the pivot of Wukong’s career: the one-time Daoist rebel now serves the Buddhist pilgrimage.
Upholding the teaching, I press toward the Thunderclap; seeking the scriptures, I return to the true awakening.
雷音 (Léiyīn) is the Thunderclap Monastery, the Buddha’s seat in the Western Heaven and the pilgrimage’s goal. 覺正 (jué zhèng) — "right awakening" — puts 覺 for bodhi, enlightenment.
Encountering here a wild and vicious fiend, I set my divine powers to their play.
相逢 (xiāngféng) is "to meet, to encounter"; 神通 (shéntōng), the supernatural powers won through cultivation. The line turns from autobiography to the confrontation at hand.
Give me back my monk of the Great Tang; we go west to pay homage to the Buddha-sages.
The verb is imperative and possessive: 還我 (huán wǒ), "return to me" — 還 read huán, "to give back," not hái. 參佛聖 (cān Fó-shèng) takes 參 in the pilgrim’s sense, "to attend upon, do reverence before."
Let both our sides lay down this war, and each keep to his own realm of peace.
罷戰爭 (bà zhànzhēng) — "cease the fighting" — offers a truce; 各守平安境 ("each guard his realm of peace") frames it as mutual, territorial withdrawal.
Do not provoke Old Sun to a rage, and get that aged life of yours maimed and cut short.”
The offer curdles into threat. 休惹 ("do not provoke"), 焦 (burning exasperation), and the mocking 老性命 ("your old life") close the recitation on Wukong’s characteristic bravado.
Wukong’s 自報家門 — the self-introduction chanted before combat — is a fixed convention of the vernacular war-tale, and the poet uses it to compress the hero’s whole biography into eight terse couplets: Flower-Fruit Mountain and the Water-Curtain Cave; the Havoc in Heaven; the long imprisonment and its lifting; and the turn westward on the scripture-quest.
The recitation’s hinge is 棄道從僧 — the abandonment of the Daoist path for the Buddhist — which states in miniature the syncretic movement Plaks finds structuring the novel. Framing the verse is a fine visual irony: the demon who struts out "bristling and blustering" clutches a 假葫蘆, a counterfeit, while the hero who has the true one demands his monk back and threatens the fiend’s "old life" in the same breath.