葷素兩盤 The Two Kinds of Bun
以心問心，無計所奈，只得強打精神，開口道：「葷的何如？素的何如？」女怪道：「葷的是人肉餡饝饝，素的是鄧沙餡饝饝。」三藏道：「貧僧吃素。」那怪笑道：「女童，看熱茶來，與你家長爺爺吃素饝饝。」一女童果捧著香茶一盞，放在長老面前。那怪將一個素饝饝劈破，遞與三藏。三藏將個葷饝饝囫圇遞與女怪。女怪笑道：「御弟，你怎麼不劈破與我？」三藏合掌道：「我出家人，不敢破葷。」那女怪道：「你出家人不敢破葷，怎麼前日在子母河邊吃水高，今日又好吃鄧沙餡？」三藏道：「水高船去急，沙陷馬行遲。」以心问心，无计所奈，只得强打精神，开口道：「荤的何如？素的何如？」女怪道：「荤的是人肉馅饝饝，素的是邓沙馅饝饝。」三藏道：「贫僧吃素。」那怪笑道：「女童，看热茶来，与你家长爷爷吃素饝饝。」一女童果捧着香茶一盏，放在长老面前。那怪将一个素饝饝劈破，递与三藏。三藏将个荤饝饝囫囵递与女怪。女怪笑道：「御弟，你怎么不劈破与我？」三藏合掌道：「我出家人，不敢破荤。」那女怪道：「你出家人不敢破荤，怎么前日在子母河边吃水高，今日又好吃邓沙馅？」三藏道：「水高船去急，沙陷马行迟。」
逐句解 Line by line
Questioning his own heart with his own heart and finding no way out of it, he could only force his spirits up and speak: “What is in the meat ones? And what in the fast ones?”
以心問心 — heart questioning heart — is the set phrase for talking yourself round in silence. 強打精神 takes 強 as qiǎng, to force yourself to something; the qiáng that means strong would be wrong. 只得 takes 得 as dé.
The woman fiend said, “The meat ones are buns with a filling of human flesh; the fast ones are buns filled with sweet bean paste.”
She answers the question exactly, and makes no attempt at all to disguise what is in the first platter. 鄧沙 is again the edition's own spelling for sweet bean paste, kept as printed.
Tripitaka said, “This poor monk eats fast fare.”
貧僧 — "this poor monk" — is the humble word a monk uses for himself, like a doctor saying "one's patients". This is his first speech since he was captured, and it is about diet, not doctrine.
The fiend said with a laugh, “Girls, see to some hot tea, so that the venerable lord of your house may take it with his fasting buns.”
看熱茶來 takes 看 as kàn in its sense of seeing to a thing. The phrase to watch is 家長爺爺, the venerable lord of the household: she installs Tripitaka as master of her house in front of her own servants, before he has agreed to anything whatever.
Sure enough a maidservant came bearing a cup of fragrant tea, and set it down before the elder.
捧著 is the ongoing-action zhe. 果 here is the adverb "sure enough", not the noun "fruit".
The fiend broke one of the fasting buns open and passed it to Tripitaka.
將 is the handling word jiāng, marking what gets acted on. 劈破, to split open, is the verb the entire following exchange turns on — watch it.
Tripitaka passed a meat bun to the woman fiend, whole and unbroken.
囫圇 means whole, entire, unsplit. Set against 劈破 in the line above, the contrast is exact and quite deliberate: she opened his; he hands hers back shut.
The woman fiend laughed and said, “Royal brother, why will you not break mine open for me?”
Her question is the set-up for the pun that follows. Nothing here needs a ruling.
Tripitaka put his palms together and said, “I am one who has left the household life; I dare not break meat.”
Here is the joke, and it is a good one. 破葷 means two things at once: to break open a meat bun, and to break the rule against eating meat. She asks in the innocent sense; he answers in the guilty one, and by refusing the second he refuses the first as well. Four characters, and he is out of it.
The woman fiend said, “You who have left the household life dare not break meat — then how was it that the other day, beside the Motherhood River, you took the high water, and today you are glad enough to eat a filling of sweet bean paste?”
子母河 takes 子 as the full zǐ, being part of a name — not the light zi it carries as a bare suffix. This is the river whose water made the pilgrims pregnant a few chapters back. 吃水高 is obscure; see the commentary.
Tripitaka said, “When the water runs high the boat goes swiftly; where the sand silts deep the horse travels slow.”
馬行遲 takes 行 as xíng, to travel. The couplet answers her taunt by picking up its two nouns — 水 water and 沙 sand — and reading them as features of a road rather than of a meal.
The whole exchange rests on 破葷, which means both "break open a bun with meat in it" and "break the rule against meat". She hands him a fasting bun already split; he hands her a meat bun whole. When she asks why he will not break hers open for her, she is asking in the innocent sense and inviting an answer in the guilty one. His reply, 不敢破葷, takes the guilty sense and declines it — which declines the innocent request too. It is the deftest thing he does in the chapter, and it costs him four characters.
Around this the demon is quietly assembling a household. She tells her maids to bring tea for 家長爺爺, the venerable lord of the house — a form of address that makes Tripitaka master of her cave in her servants' hearing, before he has agreed to a thing. The seduction proceeds less by argument than by steady assumption, the way a pushy host seats you at the head of the table and starts serving. Notice how much of it is done with forms of address and offers of food.
Her last thrust is a charge of hypocrisy: if he dare not break his abstinence, how did he come to take 水高 at the Motherhood River, and how does he come to be eating sweet bean paste now? The phrase 吃水高 is obscure and is kept exactly as the edition prints it; what is plain is that it points back to the water of that river, drunk in an earlier chapter with famous results. Tripitaka does not defend himself. He answers with a couplet that lifts her two nouns — the high water, the silting sand — clean out of the argument and drops them onto a road, where one speeds a boat and the other slows a horse. He wins by refusing to have the argument.