Canonical Classics ← 第六十三回
第六十三回
èrsēngdàngguàinàolónggōng
qúnshèngchúxiéhuòbǎobèi

Two Monks Quell a Fiend and Make Havoc in the Dragon Palace · A Host of Sages Puts Down the Evil and Recovers the Treasure

後人之害
模式 Mode Read Study
拼音 Pinyin Off
字體 Script
原文 Original text 繁體 Traditional Reader's edition

後人之害 A Plague To Later Men

èrlángliùshèngdào:「gǎndàolezhǐshìzhèzhǒnglèizàishìwéihòurénzhīhài。」zhìjīnyǒujiǔtóuchóngxuèshìzhǒngèrlángliùshèngdào:「gǎndàolezhǐshìzhèzhǒnglèizàishìwéihòurénzhīhài。」zhìjīnyǒujiǔtóuchóngxuèshìzhǒng


逐句解 Line by line

èrlángliùshèngdào:「gǎndàolezhǐshìzhèzhǒnglèizàishìwéihòurénzhīhài。」 èrlángliùshèngdào:「gǎndàolezhǐshìzhèzhǒnglèizàishìwéihòurénzhīhài。」

Erlang and the Six Sages said, "Letting him go may do well enough; only, leaving such a breed alive in the world is bound to be a plague to the men who come after."

is wéi here, the copular — to be, to become — where pypinyin gives the purposive wèi. 罷了 takes at by the registered pairing, and the spec matches that ruling rather than overriding it. is zhǒng, a breed or kind.

zhìjīnyǒujiǔtóuchóngxuèshìzhǒng zhìjīnyǒujiǔtóuchóngxuèshìzhǒng

To this day there is a nine-headed creature that drips blood; it is of that surviving stock.

is xuè here, the ordinary reading — a hundred and eighteen graphs after 血淋淋 in the same block took xiě by registration, which is as clean a demonstration of that ruling as the chapter offers. is zhǒng again.


總評 Commentary

The Six Sages get the last word on the fight, and it is a criticism. Letting the creature go may be defensible, but the breed survives, and a surviving breed will trouble people later. They are not arguing with Pilgrim so much as recording a reservation.

Then the narrator steps out of the story altogether. 至今 — to this day — moves the whole account from the Tang dynasty to the present tense of whoever is telling it, and offers the reader an explanation for something outside the book: there is a nine-headed thing that drips blood, and this is where it came from.

It is the only aetiology in the chapter, and it is placed with some care. The Sages predict that the breed will be a plague to men who come after; the narrator immediately confirms that it was. The prediction and its confirmation stand in adjacent sentences.