誇說銅鎚 The Copper Mallet Extolled
那個妖邪那裡肯信，舉銅鎚劈頭就打。八戒使釘鈀架住道：「你這潑物，原來也是半路上成精的邪魔。」那怪道：「你怎麼認得我是半路上成精的？」八戒道：「你會使銅鎚，想是雇在那個銀匠家扯爐，被你得了手，偷將出來的。」妖邪道：「這不是打銀之鎚。你看：那个妖邪那里肯信，举铜锤劈头就打。八戒使钉钯架住道：「你这泼物，原来也是半路上成精的邪魔。」那怪道：「你怎么认得我是半路上成精的？」八戒道：「你会使铜锤，想是雇在那个银匠家扯炉，被你得了手，偷将出来的。」妖邪道：「这不是打银之锤。你看：
逐句解 Line by line
That fiend was in no mind to believe a word of it, and raised his copper mallet to strike straight at the head.
Two readings of 那 in a single line, sorted out by where they sit. 那個妖邪 points — 那 nà. 那裡肯信 asks — 那 nǎ — but asks rhetorically: "how was he going to believe that?", which is a flat no dressed up as a question.
Eight Rules parried with his rake and said: "You rascally thing — so you too are a demon that turned sprite halfway along."
成精, to turn into a sprite by long practice — the standard route by which an animal in this novel becomes a monster. Bajie hands the 半路上 taunt straight back, word for word, and that echo sets the shape of everything that follows.
The monster said: "How do you know that I turned sprite halfway?"
認得 keeps 得 as dé. The demon walks into the mirror image of his own question and cannot hear it coming, which is the joke.
Eight Rules said: "You know how to handle a copper mallet — I suppose you were hired at some silversmith's to work the bellows, got your hands on it, and stole it away."
那個銀匠家: 那 vague again, nǎ, matching the demon's own 雇在那裡種園. 扯爐 is working the bellows — the lowest job in a metalworker's shop. 得了手 keeps 得 as dé; 偷將出來 keeps 將 as jiāng.
The fiend said: "This is no silversmith's hammer.
An exact mirror of Bajie's 不是那築地之鈀 — same construction, same place in the exchange, same job of opening a poem.
Look:
The second 你看, answering the first. The two boasts are laid out as a matched pair, and the novel wants you to notice.
Nine petals gathered into the bud of a flower; / a single shaft, hollow-bored, an evergreen stem.
攢 is cuán, "to cluster, to draw in together" — not zǎn, "to hoard," which is the commoner modern reading. 花骨朵 is a flower-bud; 萬年青 is the evergreen. So the head of this mallet is a lotus bud, and the shaft is a hollow green stem.
It is not to be matched with things of the mortal world; / its provenance, besides, is named from an immortal garden.
出處: 處 chù, "where a thing comes from." 還 hái, "what's more." 凡間 keeps 間 as jiān.
Green pod and purple kernel, grown old in the Jasper Pool; / plain in substance, clear in scent, sprung from an azure marsh.
綠房紫菂 are the green seed-pod of the lotus and the purple seeds inside it (菂, dì). 瑤池 is the Jasper Pool, the Queen Mother of the West's garden lake. The weapon is a lotus, and the verse will not let the point go.
Because I laboured to knead and to temper it, / it is hard as steel, keen, and wholly numinous.
摶鍊 (tuán liàn), to knead and to refine — this is the vocabulary of the alchemist's furnace, applied to a lump of metal. The demon claims the making as his own labour, which matters: the flower was given, the weapon was earned.
Spear, sabre, sword and halberd — none can match it; / axe and poleaxe, dagger-axe and lance dare not come near.
渾難賽: 難 nán, "hard to." Eight weapon names in fourteen characters — spear, sabre, sword, halberd, axe, poleaxe, dagger-axe, lance. A list like this is what these praise-poems always put in the second-to-last couplet, the way a boxer's promoter reads out the names of the beaten.
Grant that his rake carries a keen enough edge — / let it touch my mallet, and the teeth will snap and fly."
湯 is standing in for 盪, "to knock against, to graze." 著 is zháo, an action that lands; 折 is zhé, "to snap off"; and 釘 here means the rake's teeth. The couplet answers Bajie's final couplet exactly, boast for boast, nine for nine.
The two boasts are built to match, and the symmetry is exact enough to be worth measuring. Each runs ninety-six characters of prose into eighty-four of verse — a hundred and eighty apiece, three hundred and sixty for the pair. Each opens with a guess at the other man's low trade, a gardener's rake against a silversmith's hammer. Each turns into verse on the same two words, 你看, and a colon. And the demon even answers Bajie's closing couplet in kind, meeting nine rake-teeth with a promise to snap them off. One blow is actually struck in the middle of all this — the demon swings, Bajie parries — and it changes nothing; they go straight back to talking. In this novel a weapon's standing is a claim about ancestry, and a claim has to be answered.
What the mallet turns out to be deserves attention. It is a lotus: nine petals gathered into a bud, a hollow evergreen stalk, the green pod and purple seeds of the seed-head, the Jasper Pool, an azure marsh. The lotus is the emblem of Buddhist purity and of the Queen Mother's garden alike, and here it has been kneaded and tempered — 摶鍊, the alchemist's word — into a thing for crushing skulls.
Put that beside everything else we know about him. He holds a court, keeps accounts, argues his case at law, and fights with a flower. The chapter has been quietly assembling that incongruity since he first came out of his own gate in golden mail with a sprig of pondweed in his teeth — and it will pay off when we learn where the flower came from.