病不討醫 Medicine Is Not Hawked
行者道：「這招醫榜，委是我揭的，故遣我師弟引見。既然你主有病，常言道：『藥不輕賣，病不討醫。』你去教那國王親來請我，我有手到病除之功。」行者道：「这招医榜，委是我揭的，故遣我师弟引见。既然你主有病，常言道：『药不轻卖，病不讨医。』你去教那国王亲来请我，我有手到病除之功。」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim said, "This notice calling for a physician — it was indeed I who took it down, and I sent my younger brother to bring you in."
故遣 recasts the whole afternoon. What happened was a theft and a planting; what he says is that he despatched a subordinate — not quite a lie, and nothing like the truth.
"Since your sovereign is ill — as the saying goes, medicine is not sold cheaply, and sickness does not go begging for a physician."
A matched pair of four-character clauses, the second turning the first around: the drug is not hawked, and the illness does not come touting for treatment either. The wide space before the quotation is the source's own.
"Go and tell your king to come and invite me in person. I have the power to make the sickness go the moment my hand is laid on it."
教 is jiào, to have somebody do a thing. 手到病除 — the hand arrives and the sickness goes — occurs exactly twice in the chapter, a hundred and forty-four characters apart: he coins it here, and it is repeated back to the throne word for word three passages later.
The proverb does the negotiating. Pilgrim does not say he wants to be fetched by a king; he says medicine has a standing, and leaves the officials to draw the conclusion that a summons would be an insult.
It is also the first demand anybody has made of Purpuria. The pilgrims have been provisioned, housed, seated at the royal table and offered half the realm, and have asked for nothing but a stamp on a document. Now a monkey wants a sick king to walk across the city to him.