Canonical Classics ← 第八十六回
第八十六回
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The Wood Mother Lends His Strength to Fight the Monster · The Metal Lord Works His Art to Destroy the Fiend

南山大王
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原文 Original text 繁體 Traditional Reader's edition

南山大王 I Am the Southern Mountain King

qúnyāozhāxiàyíngpánjiāngmiànjǐnxiùhuāshǎnshǎnlǎoguàichítiěchǔyìngshēnggāodào:「shàngrèndenǎinánshānwángshùbǎiniánfàngdàngtángsēngshìchīlegǎn?」qúnyāozhāxiàyíngpánjiāngmiànjǐnxiùhuāshǎnshǎnlǎoguàichítiěchǔyìngshēnggāodào:「shàngrèndenǎinánshānwángshùbǎiniánfàngdàngtángsēngshìchīlegǎn?」


逐句解 Line by line

qúnyāozhāxiàyíngpánjiāngmiànjǐnxiùhuāshǎnshǎnlǎoguàichítiěchǔyìngshēnggāodào:「shàngrènde qúnyāozhāxiàyíngpánjiāngmiànjǐnxiùhuāshǎnshǎnlǎoguàichítiěchǔyìngshēnggāodào:「shàngrènde

The pack of fiends pitched camp, gave a flourish of a brocade flowered banner, and the old fiend, gripping his iron cudgel, answered the shout and called back loudly, "You wretched monk, do you not know me?

The fiend does the whole ceremony — camp, banner, weapon, formal challenge. 應聲, to answer a call, takes as yìng, the responding reading rather than the modal one. In 認不得, cannot recognise, is de, the hinge that marks whether somebody can or cannot manage a thing.

nǎinánshānwángshùbǎiniánfàngdàng nǎinánshānwángshùbǎiniánfàngdàng

I am the Great King of the Southern Mountain, and I have run loose here for several hundred years.

放蕩 is to range about unrestrained, and he says it as a boast. Several hundred years sounds impressive until Wukong starts doing arithmetic with it, which is exactly what happens next.

tángsēngshìchīlegǎn?」 tángsēngshìchīlegǎn?」

Your Tang Monk I have taken and eaten already. What do you propose to do about it?"

The taunt is delivered as settled fact and it is a lie — the monk is tied to a tree in the back garden. 敢如何 is what-do-you-dare, the standard closing dare of a challenge speech.


總評 Commentary

The fiend's mistake is announcing a title. Wukong is a specialist in titles: he extorted one out of heaven, fought a war over it, and knows exactly what a name is worth and who is entitled to one.

Everything the fiend says here is designed to sound large. A banner, a mountain, several centuries, a meal already eaten. It is a performance of seniority, and it is about to be taken apart on precisely that ground.