分開荊棘 Eight Rules Parts The Thorns
八戒道:「不打緊,等我使出鈀柴手來,把釘鈀分開荊棘,莫說騎馬,就擡轎也包你過去。」三藏道:「你雖有力,長遠難熬,卻不知有多少遠近,怎生費得這許多精神?」行者道:「不須商量,等我去看看。」將身一縱,跳在半空看時,一望無際。八戒道:「不打紧,等我使出钯柴手来,把钉钯分开荆棘,莫说骑马,就擡轿也包你过去。」三藏道:「你虽有力,长远难熬,却不知有多少远近,怎生费得这许多精神?」行者道:「不须商量,等我去看看。」将身一纵,跳在半空看时,一望无际。
逐句解 Line by line
Eight Rules said, "No matter. Let me bring out my brushwood-clearing stroke and part the brambles with my muckrake — never mind riding a horse, I warrant I could carry you through in a sedan chair."
Eight Rules names his technique before he uses it. 鈀柴手 names a stroke by what it does — the one that clears brushwood — and the English keeps the compound rather than paraphrasing it out of existence. 鈀 is fixed at pá across the corpus.
Tripitaka said, "You may have the strength, but it is hard to endure over a long stretch, and there is no knowing how far it runs. How could you spend so much vigour on it?"
長遠 takes cháng, the measurement; the automatic reading gives zhǎng here as it did at 長嶺 two passages back. 難 is nán, the ordinary word for hard going, and not the nàn of catastrophe — Tripitaka is worried about stamina, not disaster.
Pilgrim said, "There is no need to deliberate. Let me go and take a look."
商量 is read shāng liáng, both characters in their sense of weighing something up. The clipped everyday pronunciation is declined in favour of the full tone.
He flung up his body and sprang into mid-air; and when he looked, there was no end to it as far as sight reached.
將 is the disposal marker at jiāng, taking the body as its object — he does something *to* himself. Both instances of 一, before 縱 and before 望, shift tone mechanically against whatever follows.
Eight Rules volunteers in the voice he keeps for volunteering: brisk, faintly boastful, and immediately concrete. He names the stroke, names the tool, and finishes with a piece of comic overreach — not merely a horse but a sedan chair. The rake that has been a weapon for the whole journey is about to become a garden implement.
Tripitaka's reply is the objection of a man who has been on the road a long time. He does not doubt the strength; he doubts it will last over a distance nobody has measured, and the word he picks for the difficulty is the everyday one for hardship rather than the heavier one for calamity. This is a worry about supply lines, not a premonition.
Pilgrim ends the exchange by declining to have it. He will not deliberate; he will look. The leap into the air and the flat report that follows — no end to it as far as sight reached — set up the rhapsody that comes next, and leave the chapter's problem exactly where Eight Rules has offered to solve it.