鐵丸銅汁 Iron Pellets and Molten Bronze
阿儺回報道：「已將帖子貼了。」如來即辭了玉帝眾神，與二尊者出天門之外，又發一個慈悲心，念動真言咒語，將五行山召一尊土地神祗，會同五方揭諦，居住此山監押。「但他饑時，與他鐵丸子吃；渴時，與他溶化的銅汁飲。待他災愆滿日，自有人救他。」正是：阿傩回报道：「已将帖子贴了。」如来即辞了玉帝众神，与二尊者出天门之外，又发一个慈悲心，念动真言咒语，将五行山召一尊土地神祗，会同五方揭谛，居住此山监押。「但他饥时，与他铁丸子吃；渴时，与他溶化的铜汁饮。待他灾愆满日，自有人救他。」正是：
逐句解 Line by line
Ānanda returned and reported: "The slip is pasted." The Tathāgata then took leave of the Jade Emperor and the gods, and with the two venerables went out beyond the Heaven-gate; there he gave rise to a compassionate thought, intoned a true-word incantation, and summoned a local Earth-god to the Mountain of Five Phases, to join with the Five-Quarter Guardians and dwell there keeping watch over the captive.
已將、將五行山: both disposal-jiāng. 一個: yí (before gè, 4th tone); 召一尊: yì (before zūn, 1st tone). 五方揭諦 (Wǔ fāng Jiē dì), the Five-Quarter Guardian-spirits (Skt. jaya). The Buddha's 慈悲心 (compassionate thought) provides for the prisoner's survival — punishment tempered by mercy.
"But when he hungers, give him iron pellets to eat; when he thirsts, give him molten bronze to drink. When the days of his calamity are fulfilled, there will of itself be one to save him." It was just:
鐵丸子…銅汁 — iron pellets and molten bronze: a starkly literal refinement, the body that swallowed the elixir now fed metal and fire. 災愆滿日, "when the days of his sin-calamity are full." The promise 自有人救他 ("there will be one to save him") plants the entire future pilgrimage. The verse lead-in 正是 rides this segment.
The fiendish monkey, bold of heart, rebelled against the Heavenly Palace; yet by the Tathāgata's hand he was subdued.
伏手降: 降 = xiáng (to subdue). The couplet states the chapter's action in one antithesis — the monkey's boldness against the Buddha's effortless mastery. 卻被 marks the reversal.
Thirsty, he drinks molten bronze to bear out the years; hungry, he eats iron pellets to pass the hours.
捱 (ái), to endure/drag out; 度時光, to pass the time. The couplet turns the Buddha's grim provisions into the texture of five hundred years — metal and molten bronze as daily bread, the long discipline of the imprisoned 心猿.
Heaven's calamity, bitter and confining, brings grinding torment; human affairs grown desolate — yet he rejoices that his life endures.
喜命長: 長 = cháng ("glad his life is long"). Even in torment the verse finds the hopeful note: he lives. Survival under the mountain is itself the ground of redemption — the captive who endures will be the pilgrim-guardian who is freed.
If ever the hero should once more stir and struggle free, in some year to come he will serve the Buddha and go up to the West.
重展掙: 重 = chóng ("again"), 掙 = zhèng (to struggle). 奉佛: 佛 = fó. The verse names the destiny outright: the rebel will become the Buddha-serving pilgrim who journeys west — the whole arc of the novel foretold from beneath the mountain.
Another poem says: He had unleashed his bravery, his great force flourishing; subduing dragons and taming tigers, plying his clever powers.
伏逞, formerly he displayed/unleashed. 降龍伏虎: 降 = xiáng (the fixed idiom "subdue dragons and tame tigers"). The verdict-poem recapitulates the monkey's whole career of prowess before pronouncing its end.
He stole the peaches and stole the wine, roaming the heavenly mansions; received the register and enjoyed grace, dwelling in the Jade Capital.
受籙: 籙 = lù (a celestial register/commission). The couplet lists the favors Heaven extended — office, register, grace — against which his thefts and rebellion stand as the blackest ingratitude, the moral heart of the indictment.
His cup of evil brim-full, his body falls captive; his root of goodness unbroken, his vital breath yet rises.
The pivotal couplet balances 惡貫滿盈 (evil filled to the brim) against 善根不絕 (the root of goodness unsevered). 還 = hái. This is the chapter's deepest verdict: the monkey is punished, but his 善根 (Skt. kuśala-mūla, root of merit) survives intact — which is precisely why redemption remains possible.
If indeed he is to slip free of the Tathāgata's hand, then let him wait till the Tang dynasty brings forth its holy monk.
唐朝: 朝 = cháo (the Tang dynasty). 聖僧 (shèng sēng), the holy monk — Tripitaka (Xuanzang), whose coming will free the monkey. The chapter's last verse points directly past the imprisonment to the pilgrimage: the captive waits for the pilgrim, and the novel's true journey begins.
The Buddha's final act before departing is, remarkably, an act of compassion (慈悲心). He summons an Earth-god and the Five-Quarter Guardians to watch over the captive and provides for his sustenance — iron pellets for hunger, molten bronze for thirst. The provision is grim almost to the point of cruelty, yet its purpose is preservation: the monkey is to be kept alive beneath the mountain, not destroyed. And the Buddha states the term plainly: "when the days of his calamity are fulfilled, there will of itself be one to save him."
That sentence is the hinge of the entire novel. The five hundred years under the mountain are not an ending but a waiting — a refining confinement, in the inner-alchemical reading, in which the wild 心猿 is held fixed (定) until it can be released into disciplined service. The two closing poems make the trajectory explicit: "in some year to come he will serve the Buddha and go up to the West" (他年奉佛上西方), and "let him wait till the Tang dynasty brings forth its holy monk" (且待唐朝出聖僧). The prisoner is already promised to the pilgrim.
The single most important line is 惡貫滿盈身受困，善根不絕氣還昇: his evil is requited and his body bound, but his 善根 — the root of goodness, Sanskrit kuśala-mūla — remains unsevered. This is why the punishment is not damnation. As Anthony C. Yu and Plaks both stress, Journey to the West is fundamentally a narrative of cultivation, and the mountain is its first great discipline: the mind-monkey is not annihilated but stilled, its goodness preserved, awaiting the deliverance that will turn the rebel into the Buddha-guardian. The chapter that began with Heaven's helplessness ends with the cosmos restored, the captive secured, and the whole pilgrimage seeded in a single promise.