原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
百十匹兒 A Hundred Odd Head
那婦人道：「一群有多少馬？」行者道：「大小有百十匹兒，都像我這個馬的身子，卻只是毛片不一。」那妇人道：「一群有多少马？」行者道：「大小有百十匹儿，都像我这个马的身子，却只是毛片不一。」
逐句解 Line by line
那婦人道：「一群有多少馬？」
那妇人道：「一群有多少马？」
The woman said: "How many horses in the drove?"
She has stopped probing and started calculating. The question is about capacity, not about them.
行者道：「大小有百十匹兒，都像我這個馬的身子，卻只是毛片不一。」
行者道：「大小有百十匹儿，都像我这个马的身子，却只是毛片不一。」
Pilgrim said: "Big and small, a hundred-odd head, all built like this one of mine — only the coats are not all the same."
百十匹 is a hundred or so, a round vernacular figure. 毛片 is the coat of a horse, its colour and marking, and 不一 is not uniform — the last character stands at the end of the sentence, so it keeps its citation tone yī rather than shifting the way a 一 does before another word.
The detail about the coats is the mark of a good liar. Nobody inventing a herd says that the horses are all the same; a real trader complains that they are not.
And the white horse is standing downstairs as the only piece of evidence. It is a dragon prince of the Western Sea, and it is being used as a sample to sell ninety-nine horses that do not exist.