玉帝備言 The Jade Emperor Recounts
菩薩引眾同入裡面，與玉帝禮畢，又與老君、王母相見，各坐下。便問：「蟠桃盛會如何？」玉帝道：「每年請會，喜喜歡歡；今年被妖猴作亂，甚是虛邀也。」菩薩道：「妖猴是何出處？」玉帝道：「妖猴乃東勝神洲傲來國花果山石卵化生的。當時生出，即目運金光，射沖斗府。始不介意，繼而成精，降龍伏虎，自削死籍。當有龍王、閻王啟奏。朕欲擒拿，是長庚星啟奏道：『三界之間，凡有九竅者，可以成仙。』朕即施教育賢，宣他上界，封為御馬監弼馬溫官。那廝嫌惡官小，反了天宮。即差李天王與哪吒太子收降，又降詔撫安，宣至上界，就封他做個齊天大聖，只是有官無祿。他因沒事幹管理，東遊西蕩。朕又恐別生事端，著他代管蟠桃園。他又不遵法律，將老樹大桃，盡行偷吃。及至設會，他乃無祿人員，不曾請他。他就設計賺哄赤腳大仙，卻自變他相貌入會，將仙殽仙酒盡偷吃了，又偷老君仙丹，又偷御酒若干，去與本山眾猴享樂。朕心為此煩惱，故調十萬天兵，天羅地網收伏。這一日不見回報，不知勝負如何。」菩萨引众同入里面，与玉帝礼毕，又与老君、王母相见，各坐下。便问：「蟠桃盛会如何？」玉帝道：「每年请会，喜喜欢欢；今年被妖猴作乱，甚是虚邀也。」菩萨道：「妖猴是何出处？」玉帝道：「妖猴乃东胜神洲傲来国花果山石卵化生的。当时生出，即目运金光，射冲斗府。始不介意，继而成精，降龙伏虎，自削死籍。当有龙王、阎王启奏。朕欲擒拿，是长庚星启奏道：『三界之间，凡有九窍者，可以成仙。』朕即施教育贤，宣他上界，封为御马监弼马温官。那厮嫌恶官小，反了天宫。即差李天王与哪吒太子收降，又降诏抚安，宣至上界，就封他做个齐天大圣，只是有官无禄。他因没事干管理，东游西荡。朕又恐别生事端，著他代管蟠桃园。他又不遵法律，将老树大桃，尽行偷吃。及至设会，他乃无禄人员，不曾请他。他就设计赚哄赤脚大仙，却自变他相貌入会，将仙殽仙酒尽偷吃了，又偷老君仙丹，又偷御酒若干，去与本山众猴享乐。朕心为此烦恼，故调十万天兵，天罗地网收伏。这一日不见回报，不知胜负如何。」
逐句解 Line by line
The Bodhisattva led the company inside; her courtesies to the Jade Emperor completed, she greeted Lord Lao and the Queen Mother as well, and all took their seats.
禮畢 ("the courtesies completed") — the formal salutations of the celestial court precede any business.
Then she asked, "How fared the Grand Festival of Immortal Peaches?"
Guanyin opens, pointedly, with the very feast that has been wrecked — the 問原因 ("asking the cause") of the chapter's title.
Said the Jade Emperor, "Every year the feast is held in joy and gladness; but this year it was thrown into chaos by the fiendish monkey — the invitations went out quite in vain."
虛邀 ("invited to no purpose") — the guests came, but there was no feast to attend.
Said the Bodhisattva, "And where does this fiendish monkey come from?"
出處 ("origin, provenance") — the question cues the Jade Emperor's full recital of Sun Wukong's career, recapping the earlier chapters for the reader.
Said the Jade Emperor, "The fiendish monkey was hatched from a stone egg on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, in the Land of Aolai, in the Eastern Pūrvavideha Continent.
東勝神洲 (Pūrvavideha, the Eastern Continent of Superior Body) is one of the four continents of Buddhist cosmology; 傲來國 and 花果山 are the monkey's homeland, established in Chapter 1.
At his birth his eyes flashed a golden light that shot up to the mansion of the Dipper.
斗府 is the celestial office of the Northern Dipper (北斗; here 斗 = dǒu). The beam from the newborn monkey's eyes — recounted in Chapter 1 — was what first alerted Heaven to him.
At first We paid it no mind; but then he became a spirit — subduing dragons, taming tigers, and striking his own name from the registers of death.
朕 is the imperial "We." 降龍伏虎 (xiáng-lóng fú-hǔ, "subdue dragons and tame tigers") is a set phrase for supreme power. 自削死籍 recalls Chapter 3, where the monkey invaded the underworld and blotted his name from King Yama's ledger, making himself deathless.
At that the Dragon Kings and King Yama submitted memorials against him.
閻王 (King Yama, lord of the dead) and the 龍王 (Dragon Kings) — both wronged by the monkey, who had extorted the iron cudgel from the Eastern Dragon King and defaced Yama's register — petitioned the throne for redress.
We wished to have him seized, but the Star of Chang'geng submitted, saying, 'Among the Three Realms, any creature possessed of nine apertures may attain immortality.'
長庚星 (the Star of Chang'geng, cháng-gēng) is the Evening Star, Venus — the 太白金星 or Gold Star, Heaven's perennial advocate of conciliation. 九竅 ("nine apertures") is the classical count of the body's orifices; his argument is that a creature so endowed has a natural right to cultivate the Way.
So We extended instruction and nurtured his worth: We summoned him to the upper realm and appointed him an officer of the Imperial Stables — a Bimawen.
御馬監 (the Directorate of the Imperial Stud; 監 = jiàn, "directorate") was a genuine office of the Ming palace eunuchs. 弼馬溫 ("Bimawen," roughly "Keeper of the Horses") is the deliberately petty post given the monkey in Chapter 4 — a title that becomes a standing insult he cannot bear to hear.
But the fellow, resenting the lowliness of the post, rose in revolt against the Heavenly Palace.
那廝 ("that fellow," a contemptuous demonstrative) sets the tone of the Emperor's disdain. 嫌惡 (xián-wù, "to loathe, resent") — learning his rank was the lowest in Heaven, the monkey deserted his post.
We at once dispatched Heavenly King Li and Prince Nezha to subdue him; then We sent down a decree of pardon to mollify him, and summoned him back to the upper realm,
李天王 (Heavenly King Li, the pagoda-bearer) and his son 哪吒 (Nezha) led the first failed expedition in Chapter 4. Note the two senses of 降 here: 收降 (xiáng, "to subdue") and 降詔 (jiàng, "to send down a decree"). (The deity's name is read here by the modern standard, Nézhā.)
and enfeoffed him as Great Sage Equal to Heaven — though it was a rank with title but no stipend.
齊天大聖 ("Great Sage Equal to Heaven") is the grand-sounding but hollow title the monkey demanded. 有官無祿 ("office without emolument") is a sinecure designed to flatter without empowering him.
Having no duties to occupy him, he roamed east and idled west.
東遊西蕩 ("rambling east and drifting west") — the idle Great Sage, with nothing to do, becomes dangerous precisely through his leisure.
Fearing he might breed fresh trouble, We then set him to oversee the Garden of Immortal Peaches.
A fateful appointment — the very emblem of undisciplined appetite set to guard the fruit of immortality. The verb 著 here (zhuó) means "to assign, to order [someone to do a thing]."
But he kept no rule of law: the great peaches on the oldest trees he stole and devoured, every one.
盡行偷吃 ("ate them all up"; 盡 = jìn, "entirely") is recounted in Chapter 5 — the oldest trees bore the peaches of greatest potency, ripening but once in nine thousand years.
And when the feast was arranged, being an officer without stipend, he was not among those invited.
無祿人員 ("a salary-less functionary") — the slight that triggers the whole catastrophe: left off the guest list, the Great Sage takes his revenge.
So he laid a scheme and gulled the Barefoot Immortal, then changed himself into that Immortal's likeness to enter the feast,
賺哄 ("to dupe, to trick") — the monkey sent the Barefoot Immortal off on a false errand, then took his shape. 變…相貌 ("changed his appearance") is the first of the chapter's many transformations.
stole and ate up all the immortal viands and wine, filched Lord Lao's elixir of immortality, and made off with a quantity of the imperial liquor besides,
仙殽 ("immortal viands"; 殽 here is a variant of 肴, cooked food, read yáo). The theft of 老君仙丹 — Lord Lao's elixir — is the most consequential of the monkey's crimes, for it makes his very body proof against destruction.
and carried it all back to share in revelry with the monkeys of his own mountain.
享樂 ("to feast, make merry") — the stolen treasures of Heaven end as a party for the monkey troop on Flower-Fruit Mountain.
For all this Our heart is sorely vexed, and so We have marshalled a hundred thousand heavenly soldiers, with Heaven-and-Earth nets, to take him.
天羅地網 ("nets of Heaven and snares of Earth") is the encircling cordon thrown round Flower-Fruit Mountain; 十萬天兵 is the full mobilisation of Chapter 5.
This whole day no report has come back, and We do not know how the battle has gone."
The recapitulation ends on suspense — the very uncertainty that has drawn Guanyin to court, and that will move her to propose a new champion.
The Jade Emperor's long speech is a masterstroke of narrative economy: in a single monologue it recapitulates the whole of Sun Wukong's career across Chapters 1 to 5 — his birth from stone, his erasure of his own death-record, his two appointments and two revolts, and at last his rape of the Peach Festival — and folds it into the dramatic present as a sovereign's aggrieved report. The device is thoroughly bureaucratic in flavour: the monkey's biography reaches us as a kind of case-file, assembled from the memorials of injured parties (龍王, 閻王) and the counsel of court officials (長庚星).
What the speech reveals, almost in spite of itself, is Heaven's repeated misjudgement. Twice the celestial administration tries to manage the monkey by co-optation rather than force — first the petty post of 弼馬溫, then the empty grandeur of 齊天大聖 — and twice the policy backfires. The pattern is pointedly satirical: a vast, rank-conscious bureaucracy that can neither destroy nor truly absorb the one wild energy in its midst. Read allegorically, the 心猿 ("mind-monkey") can no more be subdued by titles and sinecures than the restless mind can be quieted by outward honours; only a discipline that engages it directly — the work the pilgrimage will eventually accomplish — can do so. The fatal appointment to the Peach Garden makes the point with grim comedy: Heaven sets the very emblem of undisciplined appetite to guard the fruit of immortality.
It is worth noticing the Emperor's tone. He speaks throughout in the imperial 朕 and names the monkey only as 那廝, "that fellow" — the contempt of a sovereign for an upstart. Yet the speech also quietly indicts its speaker: every escalation was Heaven's own choice. The chapter will resolve the impasse not through the Jade Emperor's bureaucracy at all, but through two figures at the edges of his court — Guanyin, who will name the champion, and Lord Lao, whose elixir-forged ring will strike the decisive blow. (For the underworld and stable episodes summarised here, see Chapters 3–5; Anthony C. Yu's translation gives the fullest English account.)