從立自新 To Begin Again And Reform
羅剎再拜道：「大聖原說搧息了火還我，今此一場，誠悔之晚矣。只因不倜儻，致令勞師動眾。我等也修成人道，只是未歸正果。見今真身現象歸西，我再不敢妄作。願賜本扇，從立自新，修身養命去也。」罗刹再拜道：「大圣原说搧息了火还我，今此一场，诚悔之晚矣。只因不倜傥，致令劳师动众。我等也修成人道，只是未归正果。见今真身现象归西，我再不敢妄作。愿赐本扇，从立自新，修身养命去也。」
逐句解 Line by line
The Rākṣasī bowed again: "The Great Sage said at the first that he would give it back when the fire was fanned out. After all this, my regret comes truly too late.
Her regret is her husband's regret in a higher style. 誠悔之晚矣 echoes the 悔之不及 said of him four passages ago — the two of them reach the same regret about the same refusal, one in the vernacular and one in the literary form. 還 is huán, the verb of returning, inside a quotation of the original bargain.
"It is only because I was not open-handed that I have caused a whole army to be raised.
倜儻 is generous and unconstrained, said of a person who does not clutch at things, and she uses its negative of herself. 勞師動眾 is the standing phrase for putting a great many people to trouble — and in her case it is literally accurate.
"We too have cultivated ourselves into human form; only we have not yet come to the true fruit.
This is the closest the novel comes to letting a demon state its own case. 修成人道 is the demon's account of what a demon is: a creature that has practised far enough to take human shape and no further. 正果, the true fruit, is the attainment that would complete it.
"Now that his true body has been made manifest and taken west, I shall not dare act wildly again.
She describes her husband's capture — led away by a rope through the nose — in the vocabulary of religious attainment, his true body made manifest. Whether that is piety or tact, the novel does not say.
"I beg you to grant me back the fan, that I may begin again and reform, and go to cultivate my body and nourish my life."
從立自新 is to make a fresh start, and 修身養命 is Daoist self-cultivation rather than Buddhist practice. She puts her plea for the fan entirely as a plea to be allowed to practise, which is the argument most likely to work on this audience.
The Rākṣasī's plea is the longest continuous speech she is given in the whole sequence, and it is well constructed. She names the bargain, accepts fault, states her condition, and asks for the fan on the ground that she means to reform.
誠悔之晚矣 is the sentence that repays attention. Her husband was described in almost exactly these words four passages ago — 悔之不及 — when he saw the net closing. The two of them arrive at the same regret about the same refusal, and the novel gives one of them the vernacular and the other the literary form of it.
我等也修成人道，只是未歸正果 is the closest this novel comes to letting a demon state its own case. A demon, on this account, is not a different order of being but a creature that has practised far enough to take human shape and no further. What she asks for is the chance to go further.