匣中跳出 Out of the Casket
太子聞說，教：「拿來我看。」三藏扯開匣蓋兒，那行者跳將出來，𥎱呀𥎱的兩邊亂走。太子道：「這星星小人兒，能知甚事？」行者聞言嫌小，卻就使個神通，把腰伸一伸，就長了有三尺四五寸。眾軍士吃驚道：「若是這般快長，不消幾日，就撐破天也。」行者長到原身，就不長了。太子才問道：「立帝貨，這老和尚說你能知未來過去吉凶，你卻有龜作卜？太子闻说，教：「拿来我看。」三藏扯开匣盖儿，那行者跳将出来，𥎱呀𥎱的两边乱走。太子道：「这星星小人儿，能知甚事？」行者闻言嫌小，却就使个神通，把腰伸一伸，就长了有三尺四五寸。众军士吃惊道：「若是这般快长，不消几日，就撑破天也。」行者长到原身，就不长了。太子才问道：「立帝货，这老和尚说你能知未来过去吉凶，你却有龟作卜？
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this, the prince commanded, “Bring it here and let me see.”
Curiosity beats fury. 教 is jiào, the causative — he commands rather than asks.
Tripitaka pulled open the lid of the casket, and Pilgrim sprang out, scampering with a bá-bá patter this way and that.
The lid comes off and a thumb-sized monk shoots out, scampering back and forth. The sound the text gives him — 𥎱呀𥎱 — is the chapter's one really rare character, made of the arrow radical beside 犮, and read bá. That phonetic element is itself worth knowing: 犮 is bá (the rhyme books give 蒲撥切; compare the 拔 of plucking a hair and 跋), and it carries a sense of darting movement in 剌犮 — so the sound-word is doing exactly what it looks like it is doing. 匣蓋兒 ends in the light er; 跳將出來 has 將 as the directional jiāng; 那 is the pointing nà.
The prince said, “This speck of a little manikin — what can it know?”
星星小人兒 — a speck of a little person, 星星 meaning tiny as a spark. It is precisely the wrong thing to say to Sun Wukong. 甚事 has 甚 as shén; 小人兒 ends in the light er.
Pilgrim, hearing himself called small, was displeased, and at once worked a spell: stretching his waist with a single stretch, he grew to some three chǐ, four or five cùn.
And the vanity does the rest. He stretches to three 尺 and four or five 寸 — a chǐ being ten cùn, so something over a metre, or roughly the height of a small child. 長 here is zhǎng, to grow, not cháng, long.
The soldiers, startled, said, “If he grows this fast, in a few days he will burst the very sky.”
The best line in the passage, and it belongs to the extras: at this rate he will burst the sky in a few days. 撐破天 is to prop the sky apart until it splits; 快長 keeps 長 as zhǎng.
Pilgrim grew back to his own true size, and then grew no more.
He stops at his own size, which is the joke completed — the terrifying growth ends at the height of an ordinary monkey. 長到 and 不長了 keep 長 as zhǎng.
Only then did the prince ask, “Establish-the-Emperor Ware, this old monk says you can know the fortunes of things to come and gone by — but have you a tortoise-shell for your divining?
The prince, who has been educated, asks for credentials — and the credentials he asks for are the orthodox ones. 龜作卜 is divination by tortoise-shell, the oldest Chinese method: heat the shell, read the cracks. 卜 is bǔ, to divine, not the light bo. 立帝貨 is the oracle-name again.
The reveal is played entirely for comedy. A thumb-sized monk springs out of the box and scampers about with a patter the text spells out in a sound-word built on the arrow radical — the chapter's one really rare character. The prince calls him a speck of a manikin, which is the one insult guaranteed to work, and the piqued monkey stretches himself up past a metre while the soldiers wonder aloud whether he will burst the sky.
Then the tone changes. The prince has been taught by court academicians, and he wants to know the method: tortoise-shell? milfoil? The question sets up the real contest of the next two passages — orthodox divination, with its canonical instruments and its textual authority, against whatever it is that the Great Sage does instead.