代供訴冤 A Deposition in Verse, Telling the Wrong
好大聖，趨步上前，對怪物厲聲高叫道：「陛下，這老道是一個瘖啞之人，卻又有些耳聾。只因他年幼間曾走過西天，認得道路。他的一節兒起落根本，我盡知之，望陛下寬恕，待我替他供罷。」魔王道：「趁早實實的替他供來，免得取罪。」行者道：好大圣，趋步上前，对怪物厉声高叫道：「陛下，这老道是一个瘖哑之人，却又有些耳聋。只因他年幼间曾走过西天，认得道路。他的一节儿起落根本，我尽知之，望陛下宽恕，待我替他供罢。」魔王道：「趁早实实的替他供来，免得取罪。」行者道：
逐句解 Line by line
The fine Great Sage stepped briskly forward and cried out sharply to the monster: "Your Majesty, this old Daoist is a mute, and moreover somewhat deaf.
瘖啞之人 is a mute; 耳聾 is deaf. Wukong invents two disabilities on the spot, and both are load-bearing: a man who cannot hear need not answer, and a man who cannot speak cannot be made to.
It's only that in his young years he once travelled through to the Western Heaven, and knows the roads.
認得道路: 得 = dé, to know or recognise. 年幼間: 間 = jiān. The cover story even supplies a reason for keeping him: he knows the roads.
The whole rise and fall of his affair I know entirely; I beg Your Majesty's indulgence, and will testify for him."
一節兒: rounding-off 兒 = er — the whole affair, the entire business. 盡知之: 盡 = jìn, know it entirely. 替他供: 供 = gòng; closing 罷 = ba. Every word of this is true, which is what makes it work.
The demon-king said: "Testify for him at once, truly, and spare yourself a charge."
免得取罪: 得 = de, so as to avoid. 替他供來: 供 = gòng. The fiend grants exactly the permission that will destroy him.
Pilgrim said:
The narrator's tag, then a colon — and the deposition comes out in rhyme.
The accused acolyte is a man far gone in years, / dull, deaf, dumb and mute, his fortunes wrecked.
First line of the verse deposition, a 供狀 or sworn statement. 供罪: 供 = gòng, to depose to a charge. Wukong opens in the flattest legal manner available, describing his client as elderly, deaf, dumb and ruined — and then simply keeps going.
His forebears' home was here in this very land; / five years ago it met with ruin.
此間人: 間 = jiān. 五載: 載 = zǎi, the literary word for a year. 遭破敗, met with ruin. He is still, technically, describing a servant's family misfortune.
Heaven sent no rain, the people parched and failing; / king and commons, all kept the fast.
民乾壞: 乾 = gān, dry, parched. 都齋戒: 都 = dōu. 黎庶 is the common people. The drought arrives, and the deposition has quietly become a history of the kingdom.
Burning incense, bathing, they prayed to the Lord of Heaven; / ten thousand li, and never a cloud of overcast.
萬里: 里 = lǐ, the unit of distance left untranslated. 靉靆 ài dài is a pair of rhyming syllables meaning heavy with cloud — and the point of the line is that there was none.
The people, famished, hung as if head-down; / from Zhongnan there suddenly came down a Quanzhen fiend.
倒懸: 倒 = dào — hung upside down, the standard image for a people in desperate straits. 忽降: 降 = jiàng, descended. 鍾南 is Mount Zhongnan and 全真 is the Quanzhen order, a real and prominent school of Daoism: the villain is given a specific, respectable address.
He summoned wind and called up rain to show his powers, / and then in secret did the king to death.
暗將他命害: 將 = jiāng, marking the thing acted on — took his life and destroyed it. 顯神通 is to display magic powers, and 呼風喚雨, summoning wind and calling rain, is the same phrase Wukong used to Lord Lao. The deposition has now named the murder out loud, in the murderer's hearing.
Shoved him down into the garden's sky-well, / usurped the dragon-throne — a wrong none could unriddle.
天井中: 中 = zhōng. 陰侵龍位, secretly encroached on the dragon-throne. 人難解: 難 = nán — a wrong nobody could unriddle. Which is precisely what is being unriddled.
Happily I came, and my merit was great: / raising the dead to life, with never a hindrance.
幸吾來, luckily I came. 起死回生, raising the dead to life, is still everyday Chinese for a miraculous recovery — a doctor who pulls off the impossible. 罣礙 guà ài is a Buddhist term for obstruction, the snag that catches the mind.
Willingly he takes refuge as an acolyte, / to go with the monks toward the Western realm.
皈依作行童: 行 = xíng. 朝西界: 朝 = cháo, "toward." The verse returns, for one line, to the innocent story it started with.
The false-changed king is the Daoist himself; / the Daoist, in turn, stands in the true king's stead.
And then drops it. 假變君王是道人, the one falsely transformed into a king is the Daoist; 道人轉是真王代, and the Daoist stands in the true king's place — 轉 = zhuǎn, "in turn." The accusation is made in open court, in rhyme, to the accused, by a witness giving evidence on behalf of a mute.
This is the chapter's cleverest set-piece: a deposition in verse (a 供狀, a sworn statement) that tells the exact truth of the usurpation while passing, to the fiend on the throne, for the routine testimony of a mute servant's minder. Wukong first disarms scrutiny by declaring the disguised king deaf and dumb, so that he need not and cannot be made to speak, and then testifies in his place — ten rhymed lines laying out the whole crime: the three-year drought, the Quanzhen fiend come down from Mount Zhongnan, the king murdered and thrown down the garden well, the throne usurped, and the rescue worked by the elixir.
The audacity is the point. Line by line the verse says what anybody in that hall would be executed for saying in plain prose — the false-changed king is the Daoist; the Daoist stands in the true king's stead — and the impostor, unable to interrupt a formal deposition without giving himself away, has to sit still and hear his own crime read out to his face. The device is a favourite of the vernacular novel, which loves a dangerous truth spoken safely inside a fiction. It also tightens the screw: the fiend now knows that Wukong knows, and the open fight can only be a few lines away.