擒大聖 The Capture of the Great Sage
話畢，自天門上往下一摜，滴流流，徑落花果山營盤裡，可可的著猴王頭上一下。猴王只顧苦戰七聖，卻不知天上墜下這兵器，打中了天靈，立不穩腳，跌了一跤，爬將起來就跑。被二郎爺爺的細犬趕上，照腿肚子上一口，又扯了一跌。他睡倒在地，罵道：「這個亡人！你不去妨家長，卻來咬老孫！」急翻身爬不起來，被七聖一擁按住，即將繩索捆綁，使勾刀穿了琵琶骨，再不能變化。话毕，自天门上往下一掼，滴流流，径落花果山营盘里，可可的着猴王头上一下。猴王只顾苦战七圣，却不知天上坠下这兵器，打中了天灵，立不稳脚，跌了一跤，爬将起来就跑。被二郎爷爷的细犬赶上，照腿肚子上一口，又扯了一跌。他睡倒在地，骂道：「这个亡人！你不去妨家长，却来咬老孙！」急翻身爬不起来，被七圣一拥按住，即将绳索捆绑，使勾刀穿了琵琶骨，再不能变化。
逐句解 Line by line
As he finished speaking, he flung it down from the Heaven Gate; whirling and spinning, it dropped straight into the camp at Flower-Fruit Mountain and came down exactly on the Monkey King's head.
摜 (guàn) is to hurl down; 滴流流 is a sound-and-motion word for something spinning round and round as it falls; 可可的 is exactly, just so. The bangle drops the whole height of Heaven and lands precisely on target, and the prose makes it feel casual.
The Monkey King, intent only on his hard fight with the Seven Sages, never knew the weapon was falling from the sky; it struck him square on the crown of his head, and unable to keep his feet, he took a tumble, scrambled up, and ran.
只顧 is absorbed solely in. 打中了天靈, struck the crown of the head (中 is zhòng, to hit the mark) — the 天靈 is the celestial-gate point at the top of the skull, the softest place on a hard man. The blow arrives from outside the duel altogether, which is the one thing he could not have guarded against.
Lord Erlang's slender hound caught up with him, bit him on the calf, and dragged him down for another fall.
The 細犬, the slim hound, is Erlang's famous hunting dog and his constant companion in every image of him. Note who actually brings the Great Sage down: not a god, not a weapon, a dog.
Sprawled on the ground, he cursed, "You wretched cur! Instead of pestering your own master, you come and bite old Sun!"
亡人 is roughly you doomed thing, you wretch — a curse. 妨家長, plague your own master (家長 is jiā zhǎng, the head of the household). Flat on the ground with a dog attached to his leg, the monkey's complaint is not that he has been beaten but that the dog has bitten the wrong person.
He twisted about but could not get up, and the Seven Sages swarmed in and pinned him down; they bound him with ropes and ran a hooked blade through his shoulder-bones, so that he could transform no more.
琵琶骨, the lute-bones, are the scapulae — named for their shape. Running a blade or chain through them is, in the lore of this novel, the standard way to seal a shape-shifter's powers, rather as clipping a bird's flight feathers grounds it. With that, the transformations that have driven this entire chapter are switched off.
The capture, when it comes, is deliberately anticlimactic — and that is the point. After the dazzling duel, the headlong chase and the parade of brilliant transformations, the Great Sage is brought down not by any feat of arms but by a ring dropped on his head from above while his back is turned, and then by a dog. The blow comes from the sky (天上墜下), from entirely outside the contest he was winning on his own terms; intent only on his hard fight with the Seven Sages, he never knew it was coming. There is no glory in it for anyone — not for Laozi, who simply lets go of the bangle, nor for Erlang, whose hound does the rest. The monkey who could not be beaten in fair fight is undone by what he could not see and could not fight, and the deflationary manner of it is exactly calculated: the irrepressible self is not conquered, only caught off guard.
Wú Chéng'ēn keeps the comedy alive to the last instant. Felled by a magic ring and a dog's teeth, sprawled on the ground and about to be trussed, the monkey still finds breath to curse the hound for biting the wrong person — instead of pestering your own master, you come and bite old Sun! It is the perfect note on which to end his rampage: not a tragic fall but an indignant squawk, the inextinguishable cheek of the creature running on even as the ropes go round him. The detail of the 琵琶骨, the lute-bones, is the grim functional close — in the lore of the novel a blade run through the scapulae seals a shape-shifter's power, and with it the monkey's transformations, the engine of his freedom and of this whole chapter, are stopped.
In the allegory the manner of the capture is everything. The mind-monkey has been defined throughout as the principle of restless transformation, the consciousness that slips every form; and the chapter has shown, step by step, that such a thing cannot be overpowered, since the duel was a draw, cannot be outrun, since the chase failed, and can only be located, not held, by clear seeing, since the mirror found him but could not take him. What finally binds it is a snare descending from above, from a level higher than the contest itself — and then the piercing of the lute-bones that fixes the shape-shifter in a single form. The reading is precise: the unruly mind is subdued not by force from inside the struggle but by a power that comes from outside and above it, and its subduing consists exactly in being held to one shape, no longer able to change. This is the pattern the novel will complete two chapters hence, when the Buddha's palm — not striking, only enclosing — pins the monkey under the Mountain of Five Phases for five hundred years. The ring through the bones here is the first sealing; the mountain is the second; and only after both, and the long imprisonment between, can the mind be not merely bound but turned — set on the road West toward its own awakening. (On the 琵琶骨 and the sealing of shape-shifters, and on Erlang's hound, see the notes; the bangle returns many times in the pilgrimage to come.)