舔目復明 The Eyes Restored to Sight
玄奘便跪倒向天禱告道：「今玄奘一十八歲，父母之仇不能報復。今日領母命來尋婆婆，天若憐鑒弟子誠意，保我婆婆雙眼復明。」祝罷，就將舌尖與婆婆舔眼。須臾之間，雙眼舔開，仍復如初。婆婆覷了小和尚道：「你果是我的孫子，恰和我兒子光蕊形容無二。」婆婆又喜又悲。玄奘就領婆婆出了窰門，還到劉小二店內。將些房錢賃屋一間，與婆婆棲身。又將盤纏與婆婆道：「我此去，只月餘就回。」玄奘便跪倒向天祷告道：「今玄奘一十八岁，父母之仇不能报复。今日领母命来寻婆婆，天若怜鉴弟子诚意，保我婆婆双眼复明。」祝罢，就将舌尖与婆婆舔眼。须臾之间，双眼舔开，仍复如初。婆婆觑了小和尚道：「你果是我的孙子，恰和我儿子光蕊形容无二。」婆婆又喜又悲。玄奘就领婆婆出了窰门，还到刘小二店内。将些房钱赁屋一间，与婆婆栖身。又将盘缠与婆婆道：「我此去，只月余就回。」
逐句解 Line by line
Xuanzang then knelt and prayed toward Heaven:
禱告, to pray — and notice the direction. He kneels and addresses Heaven, not a Buddha. What follows is filial rather than doctrinal.
'Now I, Xuanzang, am eighteen years old, and the wrong done my parents is unavenged.'
He opens a prayer by confessing a failure. 報復, to requite and pay back, is the ordinary word for revenge; and eighteen years old is not, by any reasonable measure, late.
'Today I have come at my mother's bidding to seek my grandmother; if Heaven would pity your disciple's sincerity, restore my grandmother's two eyes to sight.'
憐鑒 is to look on with pity and to see clearly, the verb for a god examining a case. 弟子, this disciple, keeps 子 as zǐ. He offers no merit, no scripture, no bargain. The whole petition rests on 誠意, sincerity — which in this tradition is the one thing Heaven cannot turn down.
His prayer done, he licked his grandmother's eyes with the tip of his tongue.
And then he licks her eyes. 舌尖, the tip of the tongue. This is neither medicine nor ritual: it belongs to a large body of folk story in which an extreme act of filial devotion, usually intimate and often physically unpleasant, produces a cure by sincerity alone.
In a moment the two eyes were licked open and restored as before.
須臾 is a stretch of time so short it has its own name, and it comes into Chinese from Buddhist measures of duration. 仍復如初, back again as at the beginning: eighteen years of weeping undone between two sentences.
The grandmother looked at the little monk and said:
覷 is to peer, to narrow the eyes at something. The first verb she is given after the cure is a verb of looking, and it is a cautious one.
'You are truly my grandson — the very image of my son Guangrui.'
形容無二, in form and face not two: identical. She recognized him by voice while blind and now confirms it by sight, which gives the family likeness three separate hearings in this chapter — his mother watched him, his grandmother heard him, and now she looks at him. 孫子 and 兒子 both keep 子 unstressed as zi.
The grandmother was glad and grieved at once.
又喜又悲, glad and grieving at once — the same doubled feeling the chapter gave his mother a few passages back, 一憂一喜. This family never gets its joy unmixed.
Xuanzang then led the grandmother out of the kiln gate and back to Liu the Second's inn.
還到, went back to, with 還 as huán, to return. He walks her out of the kiln and back into the inn she was put out of, which is a small restoration in its own right.
With some money he rented a room for the grandmother to lodge in,
棲 is what a bird does on a branch, so 棲身 is to perch a body somewhere: to have a place to be. He pays the rent his father had meant to go on paying.
and giving her travelling funds besides, he said, 'I shall be gone only a month or so, then return.'
盤纏 again, the travelling money — the same word used when his father left her funds at this inn eighteen years ago, and the second time in the chapter that a man gives her cash and walks away promising to return. 月餘, a month or so. This time somebody comes back.
This is the one plain miracle in the chapter, and the striking thing is who performs it. No god appears. No Bodhisattva intervenes. A young man kneels, tells Heaven that he is eighteen and has not yet avenged his parents, and asks for his grandmother's eyes back on the strength of 誠意, sincerity. Then he licks them open with his tongue.
Cures like this belong to the folklore of extreme filial piety, 孝, which has a whole literature of its own: sons carving flesh from their own thighs to feed a sick parent, and in the most famous of them a boy lying down bare on a frozen river until the ice gives way and a carp comes up. The logic is consistent. Sincerity pushed far enough past comfort has authority over the natural order. What is on display is not holiness but devotion.
And it answers the previous passage exactly. She wept herself blind over a son who never came; a grandson she did not know existed licks her whole. Then he rents her a room, leaves her money and promises to be back inside the month — the same two things his father did at this same inn, with a different ending attached to them.