身世相類 Two Sons, One Sorrow
三藏道：「你的災屯，想應天付，卻與我相類。當時我父曾被水賊傷生；我母被水賊欺占，經三個月，分娩了我。我在水中逃了性命，幸金山寺恩師救養成人。記得我幼年無父母，此間那太子失雙親，真個可憐！」三藏道：「你的灾屯，想应天付，却与我相类。当时我父曾被水贼伤生；我母被水贼欺占，经三个月，分娩了我。我在水中逃了性命，幸金山寺恩师救养成人。记得我幼年无父母，此间那太子失双亲，真个可怜！」
逐句解 Line by line
Tripitaka said, “Your calamity, I suppose, was Heaven’s own assigning — and it is much like my own.
The sentence that turns the chapter. Up to now Tripitaka has been arguing; here he recognises something. 災屯 zāi zhūn is calamity and hard going, with 屯 read zhūn in its hardship sense (as in 屯蹇) — not tún, to garrison, which is what the same character means at the very end of this chapter. 想應 has 應 as yīng, "surely, it must be," against the yìng of 應承 (to assent) a few passages on. 相類 is "of a kind with."
In that time my own father was slain by a water-bandit;
He is reaching back to his own origin story: his father 陳光蕊 murdered by a river-bandit on the way to his post. 傷生 is to have one's life destroyed; 當時 has 當 as dāng.
my mother was seized and forced by the bandit, and after three months gave birth to me.
The rest of it, told without softening: the bandit took his mother, and three months later he was born. 欺占 is to bully and seize; 分娩 is to give birth.
I escaped with my life upon the water, and by good fortune the kind master of Jinshan Monastery reared me to manhood.
The famous part — the infant set adrift and taken in at 金山寺, Jinshan Monastery, which is why he is a monk at all. 恩師 is the master to whom one owes a debt; 水中 takes the locative zhōng.
I recall that in my own childhood I had neither father nor mother; and here this crown prince has lost both his parents — truly pitiable!”
And the recognition lands: I had no parents, this boy has lost both. 真個可憐 is unforced — the first thing in the whole audience that Tripitaka has felt rather than reasoned. 記得 has 得 as dé, to recall; 此間 is "here"; 那太子 takes the pointing nà and 子 as zǐ.
Tripitaka hears the king's story and recognises the shape of his own. The parallel is exact and the text does not labour it: a father killed by a river-bandit, a mother seized and forced, an infant escaping on the water and raised at Jinshan Monastery. Both the pilgrim and the prince are sons cut off from their parents by a man who took their father's place.
This, and not the appeal to law or the appeal to pity, is what turns him. He has spent ten passages arguing jurisdiction; here he simply says that the boy is to be pitied, and means it. The novel folds its hero's whole famous origin into three brief sentences, and it does so for the rhyme — the monk's private history is what binds him to the rescue now beginning.