Canonical Classics ← 第五十五回
第五十五回
xiéyíntángsānzàng
xìngzhèngxiūchíhuàishēn

A Lustful Fiend Toys Wantonly with Tang Tripitaka · His Nature Upright, He Holds to His Cultivation and Keeps the Indestructible Body

師父有救
模式 Mode Read Study
拼音 Pinyin Off
字體 Script
原文 Original text 繁體 Traditional Reader's edition

師父有救 The Master Has a Rescuer

sūnshèngcáiànyúntóuduìjièshāsēngdào:「xiōngfàngxīnshīyǒujiùxīngle。」shāsēngdào:「shìjiùxīng?」xíngzhědào:「cáiránzhǐshìjiàogàoqǐngmǎoxīngguānlǎosūnlái。」jièzhezuǐhēngdào:「ajiùwènxīngguāntǎoxiēzhǐténgdeyàoěrlái。」xíngzhěxiàodào:「yòngyàozhǐzuóténgguòjiùhǎole。」shāsēngdào:「fánkuàizǎoba。」sūnshèngcáiànyúntóuduìjièshāsēngdào:「xiōngfàngxīnshīyǒujiùxīngle。」shāsēngdào:「shìjiùxīng?」xíngzhědào:「cáiránzhǐshìjiàogàoqǐngmǎoxīngguānlǎosūnlái。」jièzhezuǐhēngdào:「ajiùwènxīngguāntǎoxiēzhǐténgdeyàoěrlái。」xíngzhěxiàodào:「yòngyàozhǐzuóténgguòjiùhǎole。」shāsēngdào:「fánkuàizǎoba。」


逐句解 Line by line

sūnshèngcáiànyúntóuduìjièshāsēngdào:「xiōngfàngxīnshīyǒujiùxīngle。」 sūnshèngcáiànyúntóuduìjièshāsēngdào:「xiōngfàngxīnshīyǒujiùxīngle。」

The Great Sage Sun brought his cloud down and said to Bajie and Sha Monk, “Set your minds at rest, brothers. Our master has a rescuing star.”

救星 — a rescuing star — is the everyday word for a saviour, as dead a metaphor as "lifesaver" is in English. Here it happens to be literally true: the help being fetched is an officer of an actual constellation.

shāsēngdào:「shìjiùxīng?」 shāsēngdào:「shìjiùxīng?」

Sha Monk said, “And what rescuing star is that?”

是那裡 is a question — what sort of, from where — so is rather than the pointing . Sha Monk asks in the dead-metaphor sense.

xíngzhědào:「cáiránzhǐshìjiàogàoqǐngmǎoxīngguānlǎosūnlái。」 xíngzhědào:「cáiránzhǐshìjiàogàoqǐngmǎoxīngguānlǎosūnlái。」

Pilgrim said, “The Bodhisattva has just now given directions, and bids me go and petition the Star Officer of the Mao mansion. Old Monkey is off.”

is jiào in its causative use. The four-character tail joins backwards onto this line.

jièzhezuǐhēngdào:「ajiùwènxīngguāntǎoxiēzhǐténgdeyàoěrlái。」 jièzhezuǐhēngdào:「ajiùwènxīngguāntǎoxiēzhǐténgdeyàoěrlái。」

Bajie, with a hand still over his mouth, groaned, “Brother — while you are about it, beg the Star Officer for a little physic to stop the pain.”

侮著 is the ongoing-action zhe, and again stands for the character meaning to cover with the hand. 藥餌 is medicine taken by mouth.

xíngzhěxiàodào:「yòngyàozhǐzuóténgguòjiùhǎole。」 xíngzhěxiàodào:「yòngyàozhǐzuóténgguòjiùhǎole。」

Pilgrim said with a laugh, “No physic is wanted. Do as I did yesterday — ache the night through and you will be well.”

is fixed corpus-wide as . 不須 takes before the first tone of . The remedy offered is "wait a night", which is easy advice from somebody already better.

shāsēngdào:「fánkuàizǎoba。」 shāsēngdào:「fánkuàizǎoba。」

Sha Monk said, “No need of all this chatter. Be off, and quickly.”

去罷 takes as the sentence-final particle ba, not the verb of 言罷 — position decides. 煩絮 is wearisome talk.


總評 Commentary

救星 — a rescuing star — is a dead idiom in ordinary speech, meaning simply a saviour, and the novel brings it back to life by making it literal. The help Pilgrim has been sent to fetch is an officer of the Mao mansion, an actual star. Sha Monk's question, 是那裡救星, is asked in the idiomatic sense and answered in the astronomical one, and neither party remarks on it.

Bajie's request is the passage's joke and entirely in character: while you are up in heaven petitioning a constellation about a demon, ask him for something for my lip. Pilgrim's answer is unhelpful in a way that is also accurate — he did ache the night through and is now merely itching — and it has the flavour of a remedy prescribed by someone who has already recovered.

Sha Monk closes the scene in a single line of eleven characters, as he closed the council on the slope and the quarrel at cockcrow. The novel has settled into giving him this job: he speaks rarely, and almost always to stop his brothers talking and start them moving.