One day, in the late-spring weather, the company were together beneath the pines, expounding the scriptures and discoursing on the deep mysteries of Chan,

暮春 again: the same late-spring weather that framed the honeymoon journey, now falling on a monastery courtyard eighteen years later. 講經參禪 is lecturing on the scriptures and sitting in Chan practice; 奧妙 is the deep and subtle end of the doctrine.

when the wine-and-meat monk happened to be worsted in argument by Xuanzang.

酒肉和尚, a wine-and-meat monk, is a stock figure: the cleric who has kept the robe and dropped the rules. 難倒, to floor a man with a hard question, takes 難 as nán, difficult. The entire second half of this chapter is set off by somebody losing an argument.

The monk flew into a rage and cursed him, 'You cursed creature — you do not even know your own name, nor know your father and mother;'

業畜 is a karma-beast, a creature whose animal birth is the bill for old wrongs, with 畜 as chù. As an insult it says you are not properly a person and you have earned it. And the specific charge is having no name and no parents, which in a world organised entirely by kinship is the deepest cut on offer.

'what devilry are you still up to here?'

搗鬼, to stir up ghosts, means to play tricks or make mischief, and is still perfectly current Chinese. 還 here is hái, still; 甚 in 甚麼 is shén, the everyday what, against the shèn the same character took in the Dragon King's formal questioning.

Cursed with such words, Xuanzang went into the temple, knelt before his master, and with tears streaming down said:

跪告, to kneel and put a request. He does not answer the insult. He goes to find out whether it is true.

'A man is born between Heaven and Earth, endowed with yin and yang and formed of the Five Phases; all are begotten of a father and reared by a mother.'

稟陰陽而資五行 — receiving yin and yang, drawing on the Five Phases — is standard-issue cosmology, roughly what a well-schooled young man of the period said instead of everybody is made of the same stuff. 五行 keeps 行 as xíng. Notice that the monk argues his way towards his mother through physics.

'How can there be a man living in the world who has no father and mother?'

為人在世, to be a person in the world, with 為 as wéi. The question is rhetorical, and for him it is also entirely practical.

Again and again he pleaded, begging to know his parents' names.

再三, twice and three times over: again and again. He has to ask repeatedly, which tells you the abbot has been dreading this conversation for eighteen years.

The elder said, 'If you truly wish to seek your parents, come with me into the abbot's quarters.'

方丈 is a square one zhàng to a side — a zhàng being ten chǐ — and it names the abbot's cell, after the traditional size of such a room, and by extension the abbot himself. 長老 keeps 長 as zhǎng.

Xuanzang followed him to the abbot's room.

跟到, followed him there. Seven characters, and no further argument from either of them.

The elder reached up to a high beam, took down a small casket, and opening it,

重梁, the doubled or upper beam, takes 重 as chóng, layered, rather than the zhòng that means heavy. The box has been up in the rafters the entire time. 匣兒 is a small casket.

took out a blood-letter and an undershirt, and handed them to Xuanzang.

A sheet of paper and a shirt. The 汗衫 is the undershirt his mother stripped off her own back to wrap him in, and it has lain in the box beside the letter since the day he arrived.

Xuanzang opened the blood-letter and read it, and so learned in full his parents' names and the whole account of the wrong done them.

曉得, to come to know — literally, to have it dawn on you — takes 得 as de. 冤仇事跡 is the record of the wrong and of the enmity it created. He learns his parents' names and his father's murder in the same breath, which is exactly how his mother wrote it.