天馬千匹 The Thousand Heavenly Horses
逐句解 Line by line
Flame-Bay and Thoroughbred,
The rhapsody is a catalogue of legendary steeds. 驊騮, a flame-red courser, and 騏驥, the thoroughbred of “thousand-li” fame, open the roll.
Green-Ears and Xiānlí;
騄駬 (also 綠耳, “Green-Ears”) is one of King Mu of Zhou's eight steeds; 纖離 a famed horse named in the 楚辭.
Dragon-Sire and Purple Swallow,
龍媒, the “dragon-consort” horse thought to summon dragon-kin; 紫燕, “Purple Swallow,” a byword for speed.
Wing-Tucker and Sùshuāng;
挾翼 (“Wing-Tucker”), another of King Mu's eight; 驌驦 (= 鷫鷞) a celebrated steed.
Juétí and Silver-Gé,
駃騠 (jué tí), a superior breed said to outpace its dam at birth; 騔 in 銀騔 is read gé (Unihan).
Yǎoniǎo and Flying Yellow;
騕褭 (yǎo niǎo), a legendary fleet horse; 飛黃 (“Flying Yellow”), a divine steed of good portent.
Táotú and Wing-Overturner,
騊駼 (táo tú), a wild horse of the northern steppes; 翻羽 (“Wing-Overturner”), one of the eight steeds.
Red Hare and Light-Outrunner;
赤兔 (“Red Hare”) is the most famous warhorse in Chinese lore — Lü Bu's, later Guan Yu's; 超光 (“Light-Outrunner”), another of the eight.
Radiance-Surpasser and Shadow-Spanner,
踰輝 (“Radiance-Surpasser”), one of the eight, paired with 彌景 (“Shadow-Spanner”).
Mist-Mounter and Surpassing-Yellow;
騰霧 (“Mist-Mounter”), one of the eight, paired with 勝黃.
Wind-Chaser and Earth-Spurner,
追風 (“Wind-Chaser”) and 絕地 (“Earth-Spurner,” one of the eight) — names that turn motion into hyperbole.
Flying Pinion and Empyrean-Dasher;
奔霄 (“Empyrean-Dasher”) is one of King Mu's eight steeds. Its partner is written 飛𦑭 in the 世德堂本: the graph 𦑭 (U+2646D) carries no reading in the standard lexica and is, by text-critical consensus, a centuries-old corruption (訛字) of 翮 (hé, “quill-feather, pinion”) — hence 飛翮, “Flying Pinion.” We keep the transmitted graph and read it hé.
Drifting-Free and Red Lightning,
逸飄 (“Drifting-Free”) and 赤電 (“Red Lightning,” a steed of Han Gaozu).
Bronze Sparrow and Floating Cloud;
銅爵 (= 銅雀, “Bronze Sparrow”) and 浮雲 (“Floating Cloud,” a steed of Emperor Wen of Han).
Dapple-Roan and Tiger-Lā,
驄瓏, a dapple-roan; 虎𩤲 — the graph 𩤲 (U+29932) is a rare horse-character whose only attested reading is lā (Unihan kMandarin). Kept and glossed as transmitted.
Dust-Outstripper and Purple-Scale; …
絕塵 (“Dust-Outstripper”) and 紫鱗 (“Purple-Scale”). The …… marks the list abridged — many more names stand implied.
the steeds of the Four Poles and of Ferghana, the Eight Coursers and the Nine Racers, peerless among the thousand-li horses.
The catalogue closes on collective epithets: 大宛 (dà yuān, Ferghana, source of the “blood-sweating” heavenly horses), the 八駿 (King Mu's eight) and 九逸 (“nine racers”), all 千里絕群 — peerless over a thousand li.
Steeds such as these —
此等良馬 (“steeds such as these”), the lead-in to the closing couplet.
every one of them, snorting at the wind and chasing the lightning, robust in spirit,
一個個 takes yí by sandhi before fourth-tone 個; 嘶風逐電, “snorting at the wind, chasing the lightning.”
treading the mist and mounting the cloud, long in strength.
氣力長 — 長 is cháng (“long, enduring”); the couplet ends the 賦 on the horses' tireless vigour — the very steeds the would-be Equal-to-Heaven is now set to muck out.
The 賦 of the thousand heavenly horses is a tour de force of allusion: nearly every name is a legendary steed culled from the classics — King Mu of Zhou's eight coursers (絕地、翻羽、奔霄、踰輝、超光、騰霧、挾翼), the warhorse 赤兔 of Lü Bu and Guan Yu, the divine 飛黃, the 大宛 “blood-sweating” horses of Ferghana. To name the imperial stable's stock by this roll-call is to insist that Heaven's herd is the sum of every famous horse in history and myth.
Two graphs are textual curiosities worth pausing on. 飛𦑭奔霄 preserves 𦑭 (U+2646D), a graph with no reading in the standard dictionaries; the philological consensus is that it is a long-standing corruption (訛字) of 翮 (hé, “pinion”), so the horse is “Flying Pinion.” 虎𩤲 likewise carries the rare 𩤲 (U+29932), attested only as lā. Following this edition's policy, both transmitted graphs are kept in the main text and the corruption flagged here rather than silently emended — the reader sees what the 世德堂 cutters set, and what scholarship makes of it.
Beneath the dazzle the placement is pointed. The horse, in the inner-alchemical vocabulary the novel everywhere invokes, is the 意馬 — the “will-horse,” the bolting energy of desire the adept must rein and master. Here a thousand of the most ungovernable, fleet, legendary horses in the tradition are put under the charge of the 心猿, the mind-monkey. The cultivator's ideal of 心猿意馬 brought to harmony — mind reining will — is set up in literal, bureaucratic form, then at once voided of meaning: Wukong is asked not to master these energies but to feed and curry them as a hireling. The lavishness of the catalogue measures exactly how much is being squandered on a post he will, within pages, fling aside in disgust.