只告行者 Only Accuse Pilgrim
八戒笑道:「師父推了乾淨。他打時卻也沒有我們兩個。」三藏真個又撮土禱告道:「好漢告狀,只告行者,也不干八戒、沙僧之事。」八戒笑道:「师父推了干净。他打时却也没有我们两个。」三藏真个又撮土祷告道:「好汉告状,只告行者,也不干八戒、沙僧之事。」
逐句解 Line by line
Bajie laughed. “Master, you have pushed yourself quite clean of it. But when he did the beating, we two were not there either.”
推了乾淨 — to push yourself clean off a matter — takes 乾 as gān, dry, not qián, the hexagram. Bajie has understood exactly what the prayer was for, and he wants the same protection.
Tripitaka did indeed take up another pinch of earth and pray again: “Brave fellows, when you lay your charge, charge Pilgrim only. It is no concern of Bajie or of Sha Monk.”
真個又, he really did do it again, marks the narrator's dry surprise. 不干 keeps 干 at gān, meaning no concern of — and because that syllable sits at the first tone rather than the falling tone, the 不 in front of it stays at bù instead of rising to bú.
Forty-eight characters, and they undo the prayer. Bajie's objection is purely self-interested and perfectly logical: if the point of the petition was to allocate blame, then he and Sha Monk should be named as absent too. He is not shocked by the manoeuvre. He wants in on it.
And Tripitaka obliges. 真個又撮土禱告 — he really did take up another pinch of earth — and amends the filing: charge Pilgrim only. The second prayer has no grief in it at all. No apology for the poor offering, no address to the dead as 好漢. It is a schedule of exclusions. The rite that began as the one decent thing in the chapter ends as paperwork, and the disciple who is about to be driven away has now been formally named, twice, before the court of the dead.