江流出家 River-Float Takes the Tonsure
卻說此子在木板上順水流去，一直流到金山寺腳下停住。那金山寺長老叫做法明和尚，修真悟道，已得無生妙訣。正當打坐參禪，忽聞得小兒啼哭之聲，一時心動，急到江邊觀看，只見涯邊一片木板上，睡著一個嬰兒。長老慌忙救起，見了懷中血書，方知來歷。取個乳名，叫做江流，託人撫養。血書緊緊收藏。光陰似箭，日月如梭。不覺江流年長一十八歲。長老就叫他削髮修行，取法名為玄奘，摩頂受戒，堅心修道。却说此子在木板上顺水流去，一直流到金山寺脚下停住。那金山寺长老叫做法明和尚，修真悟道，已得无生妙诀。正当打坐参禅，忽闻得小儿啼哭之声，一时心动，急到江边观看，只见涯边一片木板上，睡着一个婴儿。长老慌忙救起，见了怀中血书，方知来历。取个乳名，叫做江流，托人抚养。血书紧紧收藏。光阴似箭，日月如梭。不觉江流年长一十八岁。长老就叫他削发修行，取法名为玄奘，摩顶受戒，坚心修道。
逐句解 Line by line
Now the child on the wooden plank drifted downstream and came to rest at the very foot of Gold Mountain Monastery.
金山寺, Gold Mountain Monastery, is a real and famous temple on the Yangzi near Zhenjiang; you can still visit it. The plank travels, and stops exactly there. 此子 keeps 子 as zǐ.
The abbot of Gold Mountain, the monk Faming, was one who had cultivated truth and grasped the Way, already possessed of the wondrous secret of the Unborn.
The abbot is 法明, Faming, a name meaning Dharma-Bright. 無生妙訣, the wondrous secret of the Unborn, points at non-arising: the insight that nothing genuinely comes into being or passes away, so there is nothing there to die. A pointed thing to hand the man who is about to fish a living baby out of a river. 長老, elder, takes 長 as zhǎng.
He was just sitting in meditation when he suddenly heard the cry of an infant;
打坐參禪 is sitting meditation in the Chan school — the same 禪 that reached English as Zen, by way of Japan. 聞得 takes 得 as de. He is meditating on the deathless when a very live baby interrupts him.
his heart stirred at once, and he hurried to the riverside to look,
心動, the heart moves. In a story like this one that is never mere curiosity; it is the recognition of something owed, arriving before the reason for it does.
and there at the water's edge, on a plank of wood, he saw an infant asleep.
睡著 here is not falling asleep but lying asleep. 著 is the durative zhe, marking a state that goes on, and the sentence is of the existential kind: on a plank at the water's edge there lay sleeping one infant. The child has crossed a river and is having a nap.
The elder hastily took it up, and seeing the blood-letter in its bosom, learned the whole history.
懷中血書, the blood-letter at his breast — the mother's paperwork doing its job within minutes of landfall. 來歷 is where a person or a thing comes from: origins, provenance.
He gave it a milk-name, calling it Jiangliu ('River-Float'), and entrusted it to others to raise.
A 乳名 is a milk-name, the informal name a child answers to at home before he has a real one. This one is 江流, River-Float, and it is simply a description of how he turned up. It is also the name the whole pre-novel legend travelled under: the 江流和尚, Monk River-Float. The abbot has named him after the story he is in.
The blood-letter he kept carefully hidden away.
收藏, to put away and keep, with 藏 as cáng, to store — not the zàng of 三藏, the Three Baskets of scripture, from which Tripitaka will one day take his title. Six characters, and the letter goes into a box for eighteen years.
Time flew like an arrow, sun and moon like a shuttle.
光陰似箭，日月如梭 — time like an arrow, sun and moon like a weaver's shuttle. Both halves are still live idioms in Chinese, and together they are the standard way to cover a great deal of ground quickly. 似 is sì. Eight characters buy eighteen years.
Before they knew it, Jiangliu had grown to eighteen years.
長 switches to zhǎng, to grow — the same character that was cháng, long, in the name of the capital. Eighteen years handled in a single clause, and the plot can start again.
The elder then had him shave his head and take up religious practice, gave him the dharma-name Xuanzang, anointed his crown and conferred the precepts, and he set his heart firmly on the Way.
And here is the name everyone came for. 玄奘, Xuanzang, belonged to a real seventh-century monk who really did walk to India and back for scriptures; the novel hands it to this foundling as his 法名, his dharma-name. 取法名為 takes 為 as wéi. 摩頂受戒, the crown stroked and the precepts received, is the ordination rite itself.
Eleven segments carry the child from the water to the priesthood. A plank comes to rest at the foot of 金山寺, Gold Mountain Monastery — a real temple on the Yangzi near Zhenjiang, and still there. The abbot, Faming, hears crying, goes down, lifts the baby out, and finds the letter. He calls the child 江流, River-Float, which is a plain description and also the title of the legend: long before the novel existed, this story circulated as the tale of the 江流和尚, the Monk River-Float.
Then one couplet — 光陰似箭，日月如梭, time like an arrow, sun and moon like a shuttle — and eighteen years are gone. The boy shaves his head, takes the precepts, and receives the name 玄奘, Xuanzang: the name of the historical monk who really did walk to India for scriptures, and whose journey the rest of the novel tells in a considerably stranger key.
This is what the chapter is for. The ball thrown from the tower, the blinking fish, the ford, the blood on the letter — all of it has been machinery for getting one named, ordained young monk into position at the edge of his own story.