善財童子 The Page of Good Wealth
當時令郎捉住吾師，要食其肉，小弟近他不得，幸觀音菩薩欲救我師，勸他歸正。現今做了善財童子，比兄長還高，享極樂之門堂，受逍遙之永壽，有何不可，返怪我耶？」牛王罵道：「這個乖嘴的猢猻！害子之情，被你說過；当时令郎捉住吾师，要食其肉，小弟近他不得，幸观音菩萨欲救我师，劝他归正。现今做了善财童子，比兄长还高，享极乐之门堂，受逍遥之永寿，有何不可，返怪我耶？」牛王骂道：「这个乖嘴的猢狲！害子之情，被你说过；
逐句解 Line by line
"At that time your honoured son had seized my master and meant to eat his flesh, and I could not get near him. Happily the bodhisattva Guanyin, wishing to save my master, exhorted him to turn to the right way."
令郎 is the polite form for another man's son, roughly "your esteemed son." 近他不得 is the can't-do shape again — get-near-him-not-able — with 得 as the toneless de, and 不 staying bù in front of it. 歸正, to return to the correct path, is the standard term for a demon's conversion.
"He is now the Page of Good Wealth, higher in station than my elder brother himself, enjoying the halls of utmost bliss and receiving the unending life of untrammelled ease. What is amiss in that, that you should turn and blame me?"
善財童子 is Sudhana, the young pilgrim of the Gandavyuha sutra, and 童子 takes zǐ, the dignified syllable, not a swallowed suffix. 樂 is lè in 極樂, the Land of Utmost Bliss. 還 is hái. The stinging phrase is 比兄長還高: 兄長 is the same elder-brother address the Great Sage uses of the Bull King throughout — he pairs it with 長兄 in a single breath a few passages later — so what he is saying is that the boy now outranks his own father.
The Bull King railed at him, "You clever-mouthed ape!"
乖嘴 is sharp-tongued, plausible in speech — the same charge as 巧舌 in the previous passage, and an admission that the argument has told.
"The grievance of my son you have talked away;"
子 is zǐ, son. The concession is total and it is made in six characters: the grievance over the boy has been argued away. Then he simply moves to the next count.
The Great Sage's defence is a genuine piece of casuistry and it works. He does not deny a single fact; he re-describes the outcome. The son who was subdued has in fact been promoted — he attends a bodhisattva, occupies the halls of bliss, and enjoys a lifespan with no end on it. On that account the father has no grievance at all but a debt.
The sharpest stroke is 比兄長還高 — he now stands higher than you do. The Great Sage is reminding the Bull King that in the celestial pecking order the boy has overtaken his own father, and he does it in exactly the idiom of a family comparing how the children have got on. The argument converts a killing into a promotion and an enemy into a relative who ought to be grateful.
The Bull King's answer concedes the point in the act of resenting it. 乖嘴的猢猻 is not a rebuttal but a complaint about the quality of the rebuttal, and the words that follow — the grievance of my son you have talked away — surrender that count outright. He does not stop, though. He simply moves to the next charge, which is an hour old rather than five years old, and on which the Great Sage has no case whatever.