Canonical Classics ← 第四十三回
第四十三回
hēiyāonièqínsēng
西yánglóngzhuōtuóhuí

A Black-River Fiend Carries the Monk Off · A Western-Ocean Dragon-Prince Catches the Alligator and Returns

收寶安齋 全虧大聖
模式 Mode Read Study
拼音 Pinyin Off
字體 Script
原文 Original text 繁體 Traditional Reader's edition

收寶安齋 全虧大聖 Gathering the Spoils; All Owing to the Great Sage

jiàoshāsēngjiāngdòngnèibǎoshōuleqiěxúnliángānpáizhāifànguǎndàileshīzhǎnglǎoxìngmìngquánkuīsūnshèngzhēnjīngzhǐkàoměihóujīngjiàoshāsēngjiāngdòngnèibǎoshōuleqiěxúnliángānpáizhāifànguǎndàileshīzhǎnglǎoxìngmìngquánkuīsūnshèngzhēnjīngzhǐkàoměihóujīng


逐句解 Line by line

jiàoshāsēngjiāngdòngnèibǎoshōule jiàoshāsēngjiāngdòngnèibǎoshōule

He bade Sha Monk gather up the treasures within the cave.

is jiào, to tell somebody to do a thing - not the jiāo of teaching a thing to somebody.

qiěxúnliángānpáizhāifànguǎndàileshī qiěxúnliángānpáizhāifànguǎndàileshī

They sought out rice and grain, prepared a vegetarian meal, and served their master.

They cook the demons' own rice into a meatless meal for the master. 齋飯 is that meal; 管待 is the everyday word for waiting on a guest.

zhǎnglǎoxìngmìngquánkuīsūnshèng zhǎnglǎoxìngmìngquánkuīsūnshèng

That the elder kept his life was wholly owing to the Great Sage Sun;

here is the full verb , to come by - he came by his life. This line and the next close the episode as a matched pair, and the match is between 大聖 and 猴精.

zhēnjīngzhǐkàoměihóujīng zhēnjīngzhǐkàoměihóujīng

for the fetching of the true scriptures rests on none but the Handsome Monkey Spirit.

The last word of the episode is a nickname. 美猴精, the Handsome Monkey Spirit, plays on 美猴王, the Handsome Monkey King he was before any of this started - so this closing couplet, a matched pair of lines, hands the entire scripture-quest to him and does it in his oldest voice.


總評 Commentary

A four-line coda closes the Red Boy affair: the treasures gathered, the demons' stores turned into the master's dinner, and the credit assigned.

The last two lines run five characters against five and rhyme, which is verse by any ear - but the edition prints no cue phrase in front of them, and the house rule for this text follows the printer rather than the metre. Verse marking is reserved for set-pieces the edition announces (但見, 好風, 這正是), so these two lines stay set as prose. It is a genuinely borderline case and worth knowing about.