拐帶人口 Abduction Exile and Post Duty
縱無此事，也要問個拐帶人口：師父追了度牒，打個小死；八戒該問充軍；沙僧也問擺站；纵无此事，也要问个拐带人口：师父追了度牒，打个小死；八戒该问充军；沙僧也问摆站；
逐句解 Line by line
Even if there were nothing in that, we should still be charged with abducting a person: the master would have his ordination certificate revoked and take a light beating;
A 度牒 was the state-issued certificate that made a monk legally a monk, exempt from tax and labour service; losing it meant losing your clerical status altogether. 打個小死 is a beating short of a killing one — the graded corporal punishments of the code.
Bajie would be sentenced to the frontier garrisons;
充軍, military exile, was one of the standard heavy penalties: transportation to a border garrison, usually for life.
Sha Monk would be put to post-station duty;
擺站 was forced labour at the courier stations that carried government mail — a real sentence, and lighter than the frontier.
Pilgrim goes down the party by name and assigns each of them a punishment, and the punishments are graded correctly. This is not invented menace. It is the Ming penal system, applied accurately to four travelling clerics and one young woman.
The comedy and the seriousness are inseparable here. A monkey who once fought the armies of Heaven is explaining the sentencing tariff to his master, and he has it right, and none of it will make the slightest difference.