Canonical Classics ← 第七十五回
第七十五回
xīnyuánzuāntòuyīnyáng
zhǔhuánguīdàozhēn

The Mind-Monkey Bores Through the Body of Yin and Yang · The Demon Lord Returns to the True Great Way

兩個瓢
模式 Mode Read Study
拼音 Pinyin Off
字體 Script
原文 Original text 繁體 Traditional Reader's edition 含詞賦 With rhapsody

兩個瓢 Two Gourds At One Slice

shēnshāndòngfàngshàngzhènyǒugōngláoshēnshāndòngfàngshàngzhènyǒugōngláo
chānzhezhèshàngtiānlínggàixuējiùshìliǎngpiáo。」chānzhezhèshàngtiānlínggàixuējiùshìliǎngpiáo。」

shèngxiàodào:「zhèyāojīngméiyǎnlǎosūnrènzuòpiáotóulishèngxiàodào:「zhèyāojīngméiyǎnlǎosūnrènzuòpiáotóuli


逐句解 Line by line

shēnshāndòngfàngshàngzhènyǒugōngláo shēnshāndòngfàngshàngzhènyǒugōngláo

Kept in a deep-mountain ancient cave, and in the field it has earned its merits.

The line before the punchline, and it is deliberately flat: where the thing is stored and what it has achieved. Every recital in this chapter slows down before its last line.

chānzhezhèshàngtiānlínggàixuējiùshìliǎngpiáo。」 chānzhezhèshàngtiānlínggàixuējiùshìliǎngpiáo。」

"Catch it under this monk's crown of yours, and one pare of it makes two gourd-dippers."

攙著 takes the light zhe. 天靈蓋 is the crown of the skull, the fontanelle plate — a real anatomical term. And is a dipper made by halving a gourd and scooping it out, which is exactly what a skull cut in two looks like. It is the only line of the poem with a person in it.

shèngxiàodào:「zhèyāojīngméiyǎnlǎosūnrènzuòpiáotóuli shèngxiàodào:「zhèyāojīngméiyǎnlǎosūnrènzuòpiáotóuli

The Great Sage laughed: "This demon has no eye for things at all, taking old Sun for a gourd-head."

沒眼色 — no eye for the colour of things — is the same insult Bajie threw at Wukong a few passages back. And 瓢頭, gourd-head, is Wukong turning the demon's own image into a name for himself.


總評 Commentary

The poem's punchline is a piece of kitchenware. A is the commonest object in a Ming household — a halved gourd for scooping water — and the sabre's boast is that a head is one blow away from being two of them. Domestic imagery for an execution is a very old way of making violence land.

Wukong's reply refuses the frame entirely. He does not dispute the sabre; he objects to being mistaken for a gourd, which is a complaint about categories rather than about danger. The demon has made a threat and been answered with a correction.