菩薩朝天 Guanyin Ascends to Heaven
且不言天神圍繞，大聖安歇。話表南海普陀落伽山大慈大悲救苦救難靈感觀世音菩薩，自王母娘娘請赴蟠桃大會，與大徒弟惠岸行者，同登寶閣瑤池，見那裡荒荒涼涼，席面殘亂；雖有幾位天仙，俱不就座，都在那裡亂紛紛講論。菩薩與眾仙相見畢，眾仙備言前事。菩薩道：「既無盛會，又不傳杯，汝等可跟貧僧去見玉帝。」眾仙怡然隨往。至通明殿前，早有四大天師、赤腳大仙等眾俱在此，迎著菩薩，即道玉帝煩惱，調遣天兵，擒怪未回等因。菩薩道：「我要見見玉帝，煩為轉奏。」天師丘弘濟即入靈霄寶殿，啟知宣入。時有太上老君在上，王母娘娘在後。且不言天神围绕，大圣安歇。话表南海普陀落伽山大慈大悲救苦救难灵感观世音菩萨，自王母娘娘请赴蟠桃大会，与大徒弟惠岸行者，同登宝阁瑶池，见那里荒荒凉凉，席面残乱；虽有几位天仙，俱不就座，都在那里乱纷纷讲论。菩萨与众仙相见毕，众仙备言前事。菩萨道：「既无盛会，又不传杯，汝等可跟贫僧去见玉帝。」众仙怡然随往。至通明殿前，早有四大天师、赤脚大仙等众俱在此，迎着菩萨，即道玉帝烦恼，调遣天兵，擒怪未回等因。菩萨道：「我要见见玉帝，烦为转奏。」天师丘弘济即入灵霄宝殿，启知宣入。时有太上老君在上，王母娘娘在后。
逐句解 Line by line
But let us leave the heavenly soldiers ringed about him, and the Great Sage to his rest.
A storyteller changing camera angle. 且不言 means roughly say no more, for now, of — the hinge that drops one thread to pick up another. Here it lifts us off the besieged mountain and carries us up into Heaven's council chambers. 大聖, Great Sage, is the short form of 齊天大聖, the title the monkey bullied out of Heaven two chapters back.
Our tale now tells of the Bodhisattva Guanshiyin of Potalaka Mountain in the Southern Sea — Great in Mercy, Great in Compassion, who rescues from suffering and from calamity, the Numinous and Responsive One —
話表 — the tale now tells of — is the answering half of that hinge, and it opens on Guanyin. What follows is her full liturgical style, the heaped honorific a temple chant runs through before it gets to the name: 大慈大悲, great in mercy, great in compassion; 救苦救難, rescuer from suffering and from calamity; 靈感, numinous and responsive. The name itself, 觀世音 (Guanshiyin), means Perceiver of the World's Sounds, the Chinese rendering of Sanskrit Avalokiteśvara. She lives on 普陀落伽山 (Potalaka), her island paradise in the Southern Sea.
Ever since the Queen Mother invited her to the Grand Festival of Immortal Peaches, she had ascended with her chief disciple, the pilgrim Huiyan, to the jewelled towers beside the Jasper Pool,
Guanyin was on the guest list for the party the monkey wrecked. The 王母娘娘 is the Queen Mother of the West, who hosts the 蟠桃大會, the Festival of Immortal Peaches. Her companion matters more than he looks: 惠岸 (Huiyan) is also 木叉/木吒 (Mokṣa), second son of the pagoda-bearing Heavenly King Li — which is to say, the son of the general currently laying siege to Sun Wukong. He serves Guanyin as her 行者, pilgrim or mendicant. Hold that thought; the chapter has plans for it.
and found the place desolate and forlorn, the banquet tables in wrecked disarray;
They arrive to find the wreckage. 荒荒涼涼 takes a two-character word for desolate and doubles both halves — the Chinese way of stretching bleak into bleak and bare and cold and empty. The grandest banquet in the cosmos, ruined before it ever began.
and though a few celestial immortals were on hand, none had taken their seats — all stood about in a confused babble of talk.
亂紛紛 is the sound of a room where nobody knows what to do next: a confused buzz of talk. Robbed of their feast, the immortals mill about instead of sitting down to it.
When the Bodhisattva had greeted the assembled immortals, they recounted to her in full what had passed.
備言 is to lay something out in full, no detail spared. The immortals give her the whole story of the monkey's depredations.
Said the Bodhisattva, "Since there is no festival, and no cups are being passed, you may all come with this humble cleric to see the Jade Emperor."
Guanyin calls herself 貧僧, this poor monk — the standard modest first person of a Buddhist religious, the way a bishop might say your unworthy servant. 傳杯, passing the cup round, names the very ritual that is conspicuously not happening: no cups going round, so no feast.
The immortals followed her gladly.
怡然 is contentedly, with pleasure. Given something to do at last, the idle immortals fall in behind her gladly.
Arriving before the Hall of Communicating Brightness, they found the Four Grand Preceptors, the Barefoot Immortal, and others already assembled, who came forward to greet the Bodhisattva,
通明殿, the Hall of Communicating Brightness, is the antechamber to the Jade Emperor's throne room. The 四大天師, the Four Grand Celestial Preceptors, are the Daoist patriarchs who attend him. And note the 赤腳大仙, the Barefoot Immortal, standing about here as one more face in the crowd — a few pages on we learn he is the immortal the monkey conned out of his invitation.
and told her at once how the Jade Emperor, in his vexation, had marshalled heavenly troops to seize the fiend, who had not yet come back in victory.
調遣天兵, dispatched the heavenly soldiers, points back to the hundred thousand sent against the monkey under Heavenly King Li at the close of the last chapter. 擒怪未回: sent to seize the fiend, not yet returned. Nobody in Heaven knows how it is going.
Said the Bodhisattva, "I wish to see the Jade Emperor; trouble yourselves to announce me."
轉奏 is to pass a petition up the chain. Nobody simply walks in on the Jade Emperor; requests go through whichever officials are on duty. Even the Bodhisattva of Compassion files through channels.
The Preceptor Qiu Hongji went straightway into the Treasure Hall of Divine Mists, made his report, and she was summoned in.
丘弘濟 (Qiu Hongji) is one of the four preceptors. 靈霄寶殿, the Treasure Hall of Divine Mists, is where the Jade Emperor holds audience — the administrative heart of the Daoist heaven, laid out along the lines of the Ming court it is modelled on. One textual detail: this edition writes the surname 丘, where some others print 邱.
At that time the Most High Lord Lao was seated above, and the Queen Mother behind.
太上老君, the Most High Lord Lao, is Laozi as a god — supreme patriarch of Daoism. Keep an eye on him. It is his elixir that has already made the monkey unkillable, and the ring on his arm that will land the winning blow at the end of this chapter. The seating puts the three highest powers of the scene in one frame — the Jade Emperor above, Lord Lao beside him, the Queen Mother behind — with Guanyin about to walk in among them.
The chapter opens by swinging the lens away from the rampaging monkey and up to the celestial bureaucracy he has thrown into disarray. The storyteller's hinge 且不言…話表… (say no more of… the tale now tells of…) is the standard seam of the vernacular novel, the 章回小說 or chaptered novel, stitching one thread to the next; here it carries us from the besieged 花果山 to the wrecked banquet of the 蟠桃大會. The chapter's title — 觀音赴會問原因，小聖施威降大聖, Guanyin attends the feast and asks the cause; the Lesser Sage exerts his might and subdues the Great Sage — is already being acted out in these first lines. It is Guanyin who finds the ruin, and Guanyin who decides to take it to the Jade Emperor.
On its surface this is connective court narrative, but it is doing careful work. Wú Chéng'ēn stages Heaven's response to Sun Wukong as an exercise in paperwork: petitions are relayed upward (轉奏), officials announce callers (啟知宣入), and even the Bodhisattva of Compassion must observe protocol to get an audience. The Daoist heaven of this novel is a mirror of the Ming imperial state, with its halls (通明殿, 靈霄寶殿), its ranked preceptors and its memorials — a celestial civil service with a filing system. Against all that orderly machinery the monkey — the 心猿, the mind-monkey of the allegorical reading — is pure disruptive energy, and the comedy of the coming pages lies in watching an entire cosmic administration mobilise against one unruly creature.
The scene also quietly assembles everyone who will decide the ending. 觀音 arrives with her disciple 惠岸 (Mokṣa), who will be sent down first to take the monkey's measure. 太上老君 sits in attendance with his ring, the 金鋼琢, still hidden in his sleeve. The 赤腳大仙 is named here in passing, and turns out — as we learn a page later — to be the very immortal whose invitation Sun Wukong forged. In allegorical terms the chapter is setting Heaven's two great cultivators of mind and nature, Guanyin and Laozi, against the undisciplined 心猿, and it is fitting that both should be standing in the room from the opening tableau. (Readers who want the fuller allegorical scaffolding may consult Anthony C. Yu's translation and Andrew H. Plaks's The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel.)