原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
打松林裡 Those Three Are My Disciples
三藏笑道：「你不認得。那三個醜的，是我徒弟。那一個女子，是我打松林裡救命來的。」三藏笑道：「你不认得。那三个丑的，是我徒弟。那一个女子，是我打松林里救命来的。」
逐句解 Line by line
三藏笑道：「你不認得。
三藏笑道：「你不认得。
Tripitaka laughed and said, "You do not know them.
He laughs. Of all the available reactions to a child calling his disciples monsters, amusement is the one that shows how thoroughly used to it he is.
那三個醜的，是我徒弟。
那三个丑的，是我徒弟。
Those three ugly ones are my disciples.
He is amused rather than offended, and he has evidently had this conversation before.
那一個女子，是我打松林裡救命來的。」
那一个女子，是我打松林里救命来的。」
And that one girl is somebody I rescued out of the pine wood."
He says it plainly and without embarrassment, which after Pilgrim's lecture on the criminal code is quite something. The word he uses is 救命, saving a life — the same claim the demon made for herself.
He corrects the novice on both counts and gets one of them wrong. The three ugly ones are indeed his disciples. The girl is not somebody he rescued.
The phrasing is worth marking because it is a claim about himself. He does not say she was tied to a tree, or that she asked; he says he saved a life out of the pine wood. That is the sentence he has been assembling all afternoon, and he now offers it to a stranger as a plain fact.