原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
千經萬典 A Thousand Scriptures One Lesson
三藏道：「徒弟，我豈不知？若依此四句，千經萬典，也只是修心。」三藏道：「徒弟，我岂不知？若依此四句，千经万典，也只是修心。」
逐句解 Line by line
三藏道：「徒弟，我豈不知？
三藏道：「徒弟，我岂不知？
Tripitaka said, "Disciple, do you think I do not know it?
豈 is the literary rhetorical negative — how could it be that. He is embarrassed, and the register goes up when he is.
若依此四句，千經萬典，也只是修心。」
若依此四句，千经万典，也只是修心。」
If one goes by those four lines, then a thousand scriptures and ten thousand canons come down to nothing but cultivating the mind."
千經萬典 is a thousand of this and ten thousand of that — the standard Chinese way of saying all of them, built by pairing two big round numbers. Tripitaka concedes the point completely and in one sentence.
He does not argue. He restates his disciple's verse in his own words, more sharply than the verse put it, and that is the whole of his defence.
It is also a good summary of what the novel thinks about scripture. The pilgrimage is to fetch texts; the texts say the fetching is beside the point; the pilgrimage continues.