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!”
戰戰兢兢 (zhàn zhàn jīng jīng) "trembling with fear and caution," a classical reduplication (from the 詩經). 心中 (xīn zhōng) "within the heart"; 那 read nà. 兜住馬 "to rein in the horse."
I —
The single graph 我 ("I") begins Tripitaka's spoken lament, which flows straight on into the verse that follows.
“Since with sharpened wits I swore my mountain-vow, the prince, not staying, saw me off from the city;”
This poem is an elaborate exercise in wordplay: every line conceals the name of a medicinal herb. 益智 (yì zhì, ‘sharpened wits’) is bitter-cardamom (益智仁); 王不留行 (wáng bù liú xíng, ‘the prince does not stay to travel’) is cowherb-seed. 行 here is xíng, part of the herb-name.
“on the road I met a three-cornered fellow; along the way I urged on the horse's bell.”
三棱子 (sān léng zǐ) puns on the herb bur-reed (三棱) and on a ‘sharp-edged fellow’; 馬兜鈴 (mǎ dōu líng, ‘horse's dangling bell’) is birthwort. 相逢 (xiāng féng) "to meet"; 途中 (tú zhōng) "on the way"; 催趲 (cuī zǎn) "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.”
荊芥 (jīng jiè) schizonepeta, a mint; 茯苓 (fú líng) the tuckahoe fungus. The travel-verbs let the herb-names double as the literal actions of the journey.
“Guarding myself, my whole frame is like bamboo-sap — and fennel, when will it return to pay court at the throne?”
防己 (fáng jǐ, ‘to guard oneself’) is the herb fangji; 竹瀝 (zhú lì) bamboo-sap; 茴香 (huí xiāng, ‘fennel’) puns on 回鄉 (huí xiāng, ‘to return home’). The closing question voices Tripitaka's homesickness. 一身 (yì shēn) "the whole body."
Tripitaka's lament is a tour de force of the 藥名詩 (‘medicine-name poem’), a recognised sub-genre in which each line conceals the name of a herb from the pharmacopoeia while still reading as coherent verse. Here nine or more drug-names — bitter-cardamom, cowherb-seed, bur-reed, birthwort, wild mint, tuckahoe, fangji, bamboo-sap, fennel — are woven into a plausible account of the road: swearing a vow, being seen off from the city, meeting travellers, urging the horse, crossing ridges in search of the Way.
The wit is not merely decorative. The final pun — 茴香 (‘fennel’) for 回鄉 (‘return home’) — turns the whole clever performance back into feeling: for all his learning and his sacred errand, the monk is homesick, and ‘when will I 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 and inner alchemy is characteristic of the novel's refusal to let sentiment settle.