合掌回禮 She Came Down From Her Couch
行者止不住腳，近前叫道：「毘藍婆菩薩，問訊了。」那菩薩即下榻，合掌回禮道：「大聖，失迎了。你從那裡來的？」行者道：「你怎麼就認得我是大聖？」行者止不住脚，近前叫道：「毘蓝婆菩萨，问讯了。」那菩萨即下榻，合掌回礼道：「大圣，失迎了。你从那里来的？」行者道：「你怎么就认得我是大圣？」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim could not hold his feet back. He went up close and called, "Bodhisattva Vairambha — I pay my respects."
問訊 is the Buddhist salutation with the palms joined, and it occurs exactly twice in this chapter. The other is at Han 492, where Tripitaka used it to hail the Daoist across a courtyard. Same word, same gesture, same position in the scene — a monk greeting the master of a religious house. 止不住腳 is a lovely bit of impatience: he could not stop his own feet.
The bodhisattva came down from her couch at once and returned the salute with joined palms. "Great Sage, forgive me for not coming out to meet you. Where have you come from?"
And the answering formula matches too. 失迎 — I failed to receive you — also occurs exactly twice in the chapter, and the other is the Daoist's, thirty-three characters after his 問訊. Hers comes sixteen characters after Pilgrim's. Two hosts, two apologies for a discourtesy neither committed, four thousand nine hundred characters apart.
"How do you know at once that I am the Great Sage?" said Pilgrim.
認得 keeps 得 as dé, fused onto a verb of perception. And the question is asked in genuine surprise by somebody who has just been addressed by title, in a cave, by a stranger.
The scene is the abbey played again in a different key, and the text is not hiding it. Tag, costume verse, salutation, apology — the same four beats in the same order as the arrival at the Yellow Flower Abbey, with the offsets falling within seventeen characters of each other. In a chapter that has spent five thousand characters on how hard it is to tell a holy person from a poisoner, that is the argument made in architecture rather than in words.
What differs is what she does. The Daoist changed his gown twice, came down the steps and apologised for not having waited further out. She comes down off her couch and returns the greeting. Both are correct; hers costs one gesture and his cost a performance.
And Pilgrim's question is the useful one. Nobody has announced him. He arrived by cloud at a cave several li deep in a mountain nobody visits, and the occupant greeted him by his self-awarded title without looking up. He wants to know how, and the answer is not flattering.