藥名詩 A Poem of Herb-Names
那師父戰戰兢兢，進此深山，心中悽慘，兜住馬，叫聲：「悟空啊！我那师父战战兢兢，进此深山，心中凄惨，兜住马，叫声：「悟空啊！我
逐句解 Line by line
The master, trembling and fearful, entered these deep mountains with a desolate heart; he reined in the horse and cried aloud: "Wukong!"
The mood drops. 戰戰兢兢 — trembling and treading carefully — is old enough to come from the 詩經 and is still in use today. 心中 is within the heart, 中 read zhōng; 那 is nà; 兜住馬 is to rein the horse in.
I —
A single character, 我, "I" — and then the sentence turns into verse without a seam. Hold on to it, because what follows is the cleverest thing in the chapter.
"Since with sharpened wits I swore my mountain-vow, the prince, not staying, saw me off from the city;"
Every line of this poem hides the name of a medicinal herb, and still reads as a plain account of the road. Two in the first line alone: 益智, "sharpened wits," is also bitter-cardamom, 益智仁; and 王不留行, which reads as "the prince does not stay to travel," is cowherb-seed. 行 is xíng and belongs to the herb-name.
"on the road I met a three-cornered fellow; along the way I urged on the horse's bell."
The trick continues. 三棱子 is both a sharp-cornered fellow met on the road and the herb bur-reed, 三棱; 馬兜鈴 reads as "the horse's dangling bell" and is birthwort. Around them, ordinary travel words: 相逢, to meet; 途中, on the way, 中 read zhōng; 催趲, to hurry along.
"Over slopes and across ravines I sought the wild mint; striding ridges and climbing peaks I paid court to the fu-ling fungus."
Here the herbs are things the traveller seeks and salutes. 荊芥 is schizonepeta, a mint; 茯苓 is the tuckahoe fungus that grows on pine roots. The travel-verbs — crossing slopes, climbing ridges — let each name double as an action.
"Guarding myself, my whole frame is like bamboo-sap — and fennel, when will it return to pay court at the throne?"
And the pun that turns the whole performance back into feeling. 防己 reads as "guarding oneself" and is the herb fangji; 竹瀝 is bamboo-sap; and 茴香, fennel, sounds exactly like 回鄉 — to go home. 一身 is the whole body.
Tripitaka's lament is a display piece in a recognised sub-genre, the 藥名詩 or "medicine-name poem," in which every line conceals the name of a drug from the pharmacopoeia while still reading as coherent verse. Nine are woven in here — bitter-cardamom, cowherb-seed, bur-reed, birthwort, wild mint, tuckahoe, fangji, bamboo-sap and fennel — and between them they tell a perfectly plausible story of the road: swearing a vow, being seen off from the city, meeting strangers, urging the horse on, crossing ridges in search of the Way.
The wit is not decoration. The last pun — 茴香, fennel, for 回鄉, going home — turns the whole clever performance back into feeling. For all his learning and his sacred errand, the monk is homesick, and "when do I get to go home?" is the emotional ground-note of the chapter. That Wukong will answer this mood not with sympathy but with a brisk lecture on the moon is exactly the novel's refusal to let sentiment settle anywhere for long.