石碑通天 The Stele: River to the Sky
三藏大驚，口不能言，聲音哽咽道：「徒弟啊，似這等怎了？」沙僧道：「師父莫哭。你看那水邊立的，可不是個人麼？」行者道：「想是扳罾的漁人，等我問他去來。」拿了鐵棒，兩三步，跑到面前看處，呀！不是人，是一面石碑。碑上有三個篆文大字，下邊兩行有十個小字。三個大字乃「通天河」，十個小字乃「徑過八百里，亙古少行人」。行者叫：「師父，你來看看。」三藏看見，滴淚道：「徒弟呀，我當年別了長安，只說西天易走，那知道妖魔阻隔，山水迢遙。」三藏大惊，口不能言，声音哽咽道：「徒弟啊，似这等怎了？」沙僧道：「师父莫哭。你看那水边立的，可不是个人么？」行者道：「想是扳罾的渔人，等我问他去来。」拿了铁棒，两三步，跑到面前看处，呀！不是人，是一面石碑。碑上有三个篆文大字，下边两行有十个小字。三个大字乃「通天河」，十个小字乃「径过八百里，亘古少行人」。行者叫：「师父，你来看看。」三藏看见，滴泪道：「徒弟呀，我当年别了长安，只说西天易走，那知道妖魔阻隔，山水迢遥。」
逐句解 Line by line
Tripitaka started in great alarm, unable to speak, and said in a voice choked with sobs: "Disciples — with a thing like this, what are we to do?"
哽咽 is the catch in the throat that stops speech — Tripitaka's standard response to bad news, and the book never tires of it. 似這等 takes 似 as sì; 藏 in 三藏 is zàng.
Sha Monk said: "Master, do not weep.
莫哭: don't cry. Sha Monk gets few lines in this book, and a striking number of them are him steadying somebody else.
Look there — that figure standing at the water's edge, is that not a man?"
那 points at the figure by the water — nà. 可不是 is "isn't that…?", the rhetorical question that expects a yes.
Pilgrim said: "It must be a fisherman working his lift-net; let me go and ask him."
扳罾 (bān zēng) is working a lift-net: a square net on a frame, dipped and hauled up from the bank. A man standing motionless at the water's edge in the dark would look exactly like one — which is the joke about to be sprung.
Taking up his iron cudgel, in two or three strides he ran up before it to look — and lo!
鐵棒 is the iron cudgel; 看處 is "on looking." And then 呀, the syllable of being brought up short.
It was no man, but a slab of standing stone.
Not a man at all. 石碑, a standing stone — the punchline to the last two lines, and the beginning of something much worse.
On the stele were three great characters in seal-script, and below, in two lines, ten smaller ones.
篆文 is seal script, the old formal hand kept for inscriptions and seals, then as now. Three big characters and ten small ones, laid out the way a monument always is: name above, particulars below.
The three great characters read "The River That Reaches the Sky"; the ten smaller ones read: "Eight hundred lǐ straight across; since antiquity, few travelers pass."
通天河: the River That Reaches the Sky. Then the particulars — 徑過八百里, eight hundred lǐ straight across, and 亙古少行人, few have crossed since time began. Worth remembering the last three characters: when Wukong repeats the inscription to his hosts later in the chapter, the edition gives them in a different order.
Pilgrim called: "Master, come and have a look."
看看: come and look. 看 is kàn.
Tripitaka saw it and, letting fall his tears, said: "Disciples, in the year I took leave of Chang'an, I supposed the road to the Western Heaven an easy one — how was I to know that demons would bar the way, and mountains and waters stretch on so far?"
長 in 長安 is cháng. 那知道 is asking, not pointing — nǎ, standing for what is now written 哪: how was I to know? 迢遙 is far-and-away, two characters that both mean distance and mean it twice over.
What looked from a distance like a fisherman working his lift-net turns out to be a stone. The joke lasts one line and then the inscription lands: this is the 通天河, eight hundred lǐ across, and since time began few have crossed it. A monument at a river usually records a bridge or a ford. This one records the absence of both, and the landscape is left declaring the crossing impossible in its own formal hand.
There is a small textual curiosity here worth noticing. The stele's last three characters read 少行人 at this passage and 少人行 when Wukong quotes the inscription back to his hosts later in the chapter. The sense barely shifts — few travellers pass, few pass this way — and this edition simply prints both. Against the stone the narrative sets Tripitaka's despair: he recalls leaving Chang'an supposing the westward road an easy one, and grieves at the demons and distances that have proved otherwise. It is the note the book strikes at every new threshold — the frail, weeping human centre around whom his disciples' powers turn — and it renews, at the start of a fresh arc, the gap between the size of the task and the faith still pushing it forward.