原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
懸絲診脈 Taking The Pulse By Threads
近侍的出宮來道：「那和尚，我王旨意，教你去罷，見不得生人面哩。」行者道：「若見不得生人面啊，我會懸絲診脈。」近侍的出宫来道：「那和尚，我王旨意，教你去罢，见不得生人面哩。」行者道：「若见不得生人面啊，我会悬丝诊脉。」
逐句解 Line by line
近侍的出宮來道：「那和尚，我王旨意，教你去罷，見不得生人面哩。」
近侍的出宫来道：「那和尚，我王旨意，教你去罢，见不得生人面哩。」
The attendant came out from the palace and said, "Monk — it is our king's command that you go away. He cannot bear the face of a stranger."
教 is jiào, to have somebody do a thing; 罷 is again the weak ba, and 得 again the weak de.
行者道：「若見不得生人面啊，我會懸絲診脈。」
行者道：「若见不得生人面啊，我会悬丝诊脉。」
Pilgrim said, "If he cannot bear the face of a stranger, then I can take the pulse by hanging threads."
得 weakens for the third and last time in this construction. 懸絲診脈 — reading the pulse through a hanging thread — is named here for the first of five times in the chapter. The physician sits at one end of a silk thread tied to the patient's wrist and never sees the patient at all.
The obstacle turns out to have been the opening. A king who cannot be looked at is exactly the patient for a method that requires no looking, and Pilgrim produces it instantly, as though he had been waiting for the objection.
Reading a pulse by thread was a genuine claim in the medical literature and a byword for imposture in equal measure — the physician at the far end of a silk line, feeling for what he cannot touch. The chapter has been building towards it since a monkey decided to play at being a doctor.