錦布直裰 Three New Brocade Robes
那王子又大開筵宴，謝了師教。又取出一大盤金銀，用答微情。行者笑道：「快拿進去，快拿進去。我們出家人，要他何用？」八戒在傍道：「金銀實不敢受，奈何我這件衣服被那些獅子精扯拉破了，但與我們換件衣服，足為愛也。」那王子隨命針工，照依色樣，取青錦、紅錦、茶褐錦各數疋，與三位各做了一件。三人欣然領受，各穿了錦布直裰，收拾了行裝起程。只見那城裡城外，若大若小，無一人不稱是羅漢臨凡，活佛下界。那王子又大开筵宴，谢了师教。又取出一大盘金银，用答微情。行者笑道：「快拿进去，快拿进去。我们出家人，要他何用？」八戒在傍道：「金银实不敢受，奈何我这件衣服被那些狮子精扯拉破了，但与我们换件衣服，足为爱也。」那王子随命针工，照依色样，取青锦、红锦、茶褐锦各数疋，与三位各做了一件。三人欣然领受，各穿了锦布直裰，收拾了行装起程。只见那城里城外，若大若小，无一人不称是罗汉临凡，活佛下界。
逐句解 Line by line
The princes then threw open a great banquet again, and gave thanks for their masters' teaching.
師教 is the teaching of a master taken as a thing in itself - the instruction rather than the instructor. It is the noun the poem has just spent four lines valuing.
They also brought out a great tray of gold and silver, to answer their small feeling with.
微情 - slight feeling - is the polite belittling of one's own gratitude that Chinese courtesy requires. A great tray of bullion is being described as a token.
Pilgrim laughed and said: "Take it away, quickly, take it away.
Doubled, as the refusals in this book always are. He does not deliberate.
"We are people who have left the household life - what use have we for it?"
出家人 is one who has gone out from the household - the standard term for a monk, and it is the exact opposite of the word the nine-headed lion used for what he was defending when he patched his doors and held his estate secure.
Eight Rules said at the side: "We really dare not accept gold and silver - but what is to be done, this garment of mine has been torn to pieces by those lion spirits. If you would just change our clothes for us, that would be plenty as a kindness."
The perfect Eight Rules line, and it takes two clauses to get from refusing money to asking for something. 傍 is páng again, at the side. And 為 is wéi in 足為愛, the reading for being or constituting - it would amount to a kindness. He is the only one who noticed the state of his clothes.
The princes at once ordered their tailors to match the colours and patterns, take several bolts each of green brocade, red brocade and tea-brown brocade, and make one apiece for the three of them.
疋 is a bolt of cloth, the standard unit for measuring silk. Three colours for three monks, and the tailoring is done to the pattern of what they already wore - the same word for copying that was used of the weapons.
The three of them accepted with pleasure, each put on his brocade cloth robe, gathered up his travelling gear and set out.
直裰 is the long straight-cut robe worn by monks - the everyday working garment of a Buddhist cleric. The chapter's one accepted gift is a set of work clothes.
And there in the city and outside it, great and small alike, there was not one who did not call them arhats come down among men, living buddhas descended to the world.
羅漢 is an arhat, one who has reached the end of the Buddhist path, and 活佛 is a living buddha. The townspeople, who yesterday were handed an ounce of lion each to steady their nerves, have settled on the highest terms available.
The chapter's last exchange is about money, and it is exactly the scene this book has staged a dozen times: a grateful ruler produces bullion, Pilgrim refuses it flatly, and everybody moves on. What is different here is Eight Rules.
He agrees with the refusal and then, in the same breath, points out that his coat has been torn to shreds by lions and asks whether they might not have new ones. It is greedy and it is also perfectly reasonable - he is the only person in the room who has noticed that three men who were dragged about by the mane for two days have nothing to wear.
So the one gift the pilgrims accept from a kingdom they saved is three sets of working clothes, cut to the pattern of what they already had. And the city, which has spent the chapter watching them lose, calls them living buddhas anyway.