誇說寶杖 The Precious Staff Extolled
沙和尚見他兩個攀話，忍不住近前高叫道：「那怪物休得朗言。古人云：『口說無憑，做出便見。』不要走，且吃我一杖。」妖邪使鎚桿架住道：「你也是半路裡出家的和尚。」沙僧道：「你怎麼認得？」妖邪道：「你這模樣，像一個磨博士出身。」沙僧道：「如何認得我像個磨博士？」妖邪道：「你不是磨博士，怎麼會使趕麵杖？」沙僧罵道：「你這孽障，是也不曾見：沙和尚见他两个攀话，忍不住近前高叫道：「那怪物休得朗言。古人云：『口说无凭，做出便见。』不要走，且吃我一杖。」妖邪使锤杆架住道：「你也是半路里出家的和尚。」沙僧道：「你怎么认得？」妖邪道：「你这模样，像一个磨博士出身。」沙僧道：「如何认得我像个磨博士？」妖邪道：「你不是磨博士，怎么会使赶面杖？」沙僧骂道：「你这孽障，是也不曾见：
逐句解 Line by line
Sha Monk, seeing the two of them trading talk, could hold back no longer. He came forward and called out: "Monster, you may not talk so large.
攀話 is striking up a conversation — and Sha Monk's complaint is precisely that a fight has turned into one. 休得, "you may not," keeps 得 as dé; 朗言 is talking loud and large.
The ancients said: 'Words from the mouth are no warrant — do the thing and it will be seen.'
A proverb, quoted inside a speech and fenced off in 『』 the way the edition always fences a quotation. Words are no proof; do the thing and we shall see. It is aimed squarely at the two weapon-poems that have just been recited over the reader's head.
Don't run — take a taste of my staff."
且吃我一杖, "here, have a taste of my staff," is the fixed challenge line of these combats. Sha Monk uses it to cut the bragging off mid-flow.
The fiend parried with the shaft of his mallet and said: "You too are a monk who took orders halfway along."
鎚桿 is the mallet's handle. 半路裡 is the same idiom as 半路上 with a different second character, and the taunt is now on its third outing — the exchange simply starts over unchanged.
Sha Monk said: "How do you know that?"
認得 keeps 得 as dé. Sha Monk walks into the same question Bajie walked into, and that is the joke of the repetition.
The fiend said: "By the look of you, you started life as a mill-hand."
磨博士. Today 博士 means a doctorate; in Song and Ming usage it was a mock-honorific for a tradesman — a tea-博士 was a waiter, a mill-博士 a man who turns a grindstone. So the insult is roughly "you look like a professional grinder," and the honorific is doing all the sneering.
Sha Monk said: "How do you make me out to be a mill-hand?"
認得 keeps 得 as dé once more. Three questions, three trades, three poems: this passage is built as an exact repeat of the two before it.
The fiend said: "If you are no mill-hand, how do you come to handle a rolling-pin?"
趕麵杖, a rolling-pin. Of the three trade-slurs — gardener, silversmith's boy, mill-hand — this is the lowest, and it stings most, because the staff it is aimed at turns out to be the grandest of the three weapons.
Sha Monk cursed him: "You accursed thing, plainly you have never set eyes on the like:
孽障, roughly "you walking piece of bad karma," is the standard curse for a demon. 是也不曾見 and a colon give the cue, and the six couplets after it belong to this passage.
A weapon of this sort is rare in the world of men, / and so the name of this precious staff goes unknown.
人間少: 少 shǎo, "few," and 間 jiān. 難知 keeps 難 as nán, "hard to." The opening couplet makes obscurity itself the proof of worth, which is a neat piece of nerve.
It came from the shadowless place in the Palace of the Moon, / cut and polished from immortal sāl-wood.
梭羅 is written for 娑羅, the sāl tree of Buddhist tradition — the pair of trees the Buddha lay between when he died. 無影處, the shadowless place: 處 chù, and nothing casts a shadow in the palace of the moon. 琢磨 zhuó mó, to carve and burnish.
Outside it is inlaid with gems that blaze with rosy light; / within, bored through with gold, an auspicious vapour gathers.
嵌 qiàn, to inlay. Jewelled on the outside, charged with power on the inside — the same construction the mallet's poem used two passages back, where the metal hid a lotus.
In former days it attended at the imperial banquet; / this morning it upholds the right and guards the Tang Monk.
今朝: 朝 zhāo, "morning, today." The 御宴, the imperial banquet, points back to Sha Monk's old post in Heaven as Curtain-Raising Captain, when this staff was a courtier's fitting rather than a weapon.
On the road to the West there is none who knows it; / in the palaces of the upper world it bears a great name.
知識 has its older sense here — someone who knows you, an acquaintance — rather than the modern "knowledge." 宮中 keeps 中 as zhōng. The couplet turns the obscurity boasted of at the start into a grievance about exile.
It is called the True Precious Staff for Subduing Fiends, / and one stroke of it will crack the crown of your skull."
降妖: 降 is xiáng, "to subdue" — and not jiàng, "to send down," which is both the commoner reading and the one the very same character takes in the battle-poem of the next passage, in 降天涯. Same character, two lines apart, two meanings that are almost opposites. 天靈 is the crown of the skull; 管教 keeps 教 as jiào.
This is the third weapon-boast, and it completes a figure. The demon has now guessed at all three pilgrims' former trades and been wrong three times — a hired gardener, a silversmith's bellows-boy, a mill-hand with a rolling-pin — and each guess has been answered with a pedigree in six couplets. The insults get lower as the weapons get grander: the rolling-pin is the meanest of the three slurs, and the staff it is aimed at was cut from sāl-wood in the palace of the moon and carried at the imperial table long before it was carried on a road.
The pedigree is also, quietly, a complaint. 西方路上無知識，上界宮中有大名 — nobody on the westward road knows what this is, though up in the palaces above it is famous. That is Sha Monk's permanent note, and his is the only one of the three boasts that dwells on how far its owner has come down in the world.
The last couplet gives the staff its proper name and hangs the chapter's trickiest double reading on it. 降 is xiáng here, "to subdue" — and the very same character, a few lines into the battle-poem that follows, is jiàng, "to come down."