雙冠公雞 The Great Double-Combed Cock
那妖怪趕過石屏之後，行者叫聲：「昴宿何在？」只見那星官立於山坡之上，現出本相，原來是一隻雙冠子大公雞，昂起頭來，約有六七尺高，對著妖怪叫了一聲。那怪即時就現了本相，原來是個琵琶來大小的一個蝎子精。這星官再叫一聲，那怪渾身酥軟，死在坡前。有詩為證。詩曰：那妖怪赶过石屏之后，行者叫声：「昴宿何在？」只见那星官立于山坡之上，现出本相，原来是一只双冠子大公鸡，昂起头来，约有六七尺高，对着妖怪叫了一声。那怪即时就现了本相，原来是个琵琶来大小的一个蝎子精。这星官再叫一声，那怪浑身酥软，死在坡前。有诗为证。诗曰：
逐句解 Line by line
When the fiend had chased them past the stone screen, Pilgrim called out, “Where is the Mao mansion?”
昴宿 takes 宿 as xiù, the lunar mansion, agreeing with the poem in the preceding block. Note what Pilgrim actually shouts for: the constellation, not the officer.
And there stood the Star Officer upon the slope, showing his true form — which proved to be a great double-combed cock. It lifted its head, standing some six or seven chǐ high, and crowed once at the fiend.
尺 is romanised rather than converted, by the standing policy on Chinese measures: a chǐ is roughly a foot, but it is not a foot, and giving it an English name would import a measurement the text does not make. 本相 takes 相 as xiàng, and 對著 is the ongoing-action zhe.
At once the fiend showed her own true form, which proved to be a scorpion spirit about the size of a lute.
琵琶來大小 — of the bigness of a lute. And there it is: the cave was named 琵琶洞 in the chapter's third passage, and this is the line that pays it off.
The Star Officer crowed a second time, and the fiend went limp in every limb and died there before the slope. There is a poem to prove it. The poem says:
為證 is fixed as a set pair with wéi. The tag runs to two units, the announcement that there is a poem and then the poem's own heading, and both ride with the verse they introduce.
A flowered comb, an embroidered neck like a coiled tassel; claws hard, spurs long, and an angry glare in the eye.
距長 takes 長 as the adjective cháng, not zhǎng: 爪硬 and 距長 are matched noun-plus-quality pairs, and the first of them is unambiguously an adjective. A 距 is the spur on a cock's leg.
Leaping in manly majesty, complete in the Five Virtues; towering in strength and bearing, envied for its three crowings.
五德 are the five virtues traditionally read into the cock, and they are worth having in full: civil grace in its comb, martial bearing in its spurs, courage in a fight, kindness in calling the hens to food, and good faith in keeping the hours.
How should it be as a common bird that cries above a thatched roof? It is in truth a star of heaven, making its holy name manifest.
The couplet sets the barnyard fowl against the constellation, which is the whole conceit of the poem — and the whole solution to the chapter.
The poisonous scorpion cultivated the human Way in vain; restored to the origin and turned back to the root, she shows her true shape.
人道行 takes 行 as xíng, conduct or practice, as in 修行. The automatic tools give héng here, a reading never licensed anywhere in this corpus; this is the second of the two 行 traps in the chapter, and the character is unguarded, so the reading is supplied by hand. 還原 takes 還 as huán, to return — not the adverb hái. And 枉, wǎng, in vain, is the same character the court of Western Liang used of its own wasted scheming in the chapter's second passage.
The answer to the chapter is a rooster. Everything has been tried against this demon — an iron rod that broke heaven, a muckrake, a Bodhisattva who admitted she could not come near — and what kills her is a bird crowing twice. It does not strike her, or bind her, or argue with her. It stands on the slope, lifts its head, and calls; and at the second call she goes limp in every limb and dies. The novel's escalations usually end in a bigger power. This one ends in a natural enemy, and the joke is that the reader could have worked it out from the moment Guanyin named the Mao mansion, whose animal is the cock.
Two revelations arrive together and the second is the quieter. Her true form is a scorpion 琵琶來大小, about the bigness of a lute — and the cave has been called 琵琶洞, Lute Cave, since the pilgrims first read the six characters over its door. The name was never a metaphor. It was a description of the tenant, posted at the entrance, and it has been legible for five thousand characters to anyone who knew what was inside.
The poem spends three of its four couplets on the cock's dignity — the Five Virtues that Chinese tradition reads into the bird, the three crowings, the insistence that this is no common fowl above a thatched roof but a star made manifest. Only the last couplet turns to the scorpion, and its verdict is one word: 枉, in vain. She cultivated the human Way and got nothing by it. Restored to the origin and turned back to the root, she is what she always was, and the poem grants her no more than that.