拱手應承 He Folds His Hands And Agrees
國王舉酒道：「那位聖僧帥眾出師，降妖捕怪？」三藏道：「教大徒弟孫悟空去。」大聖拱手應承。國王道：「孫長老既去，用多少人馬？幾時出城？」国王举酒道：「那位圣僧帅众出师，降妖捕怪？」三藏道：「教大徒弟孙悟空去。」大圣拱手应承。国王道：「孙长老既去，用多少人马？几时出城？」
逐句解 Line by line
The king raised his cup. "Which of the holy monks will lead out the host, to subdue the fiends and take the monsters?"
那位 asks a question — which one of them. 降妖 takes 降 as xiáng, to subdue, and it is the only place in the chapter where the character is not the jiàng of coming down. 帥眾出師 is the language of a military commission.
Tripitaka said, "Let my eldest disciple Sun Wukong go."
He volunteers his disciple without asking him, which is the arrangement throughout the novel and has never once been objected to.
The Great Sage folded his hands and undertook it.
應承 takes yìng, the answering reading. 康熙字典 files that sense at 於證切, 音譍, glossed 答也 and 物相應也, to answer and to correspond, against 於陵切, 音膺, for the ought-to-be sense. The chapter uses both, holding yīng at 應鍾氣 and 應許 back in its opening pages. Six characters here, and Pilgrim takes on a commission without saying a word.
The king said, "Since the Elder Sun is going, how many men and horses will he need? And at what hour will he leave the city?"
孫長老 — the king now gives him a title. The two questions are exactly the ones a sovereign would put about a campaign, and they are about to be laughed at.
The king is running this as a military expedition and asks the two questions that go with one: what force, and what hour to march. Both are perfectly sensible and both are beside the point, which the next passage will say at volume.
Pilgrim's acceptance is six characters of gesture and no speech at all. He has spoken once in the whole audience, to shout a proverb about faces, and he now takes on the recovery of the kingdom's treasure by folding his hands.