誇說銅鎚 The Copper Mallet Extolled
那個妖邪那裡肯信，舉銅鎚劈頭就打。八戒使釘鈀架住道：「你這潑物，原來也是半路上成精的邪魔。」那怪道：「你怎麼認得我是半路上成精的？」八戒道：「你會使銅鎚，想是雇在那個銀匠家扯爐，被你得了手，偷將出來的。」妖邪道：「這不是打銀之鎚。你看：那个妖邪那里肯信，举铜锤劈头就打。八戒使钉钯架住道：「你这泼物，原来也是半路上成精的邪魔。」那怪道：「你怎么认得我是半路上成精的？」八戒道：「你会使铜锤，想是雇在那个银匠家扯炉，被你得了手，偷将出来的。」妖邪道：「这不是打银之锤。你看：
逐句解 Line by line
That fiend was in no mind to believe a word of it, and raised his copper mallet to strike straight at the head.
Two readings of 那 in one segment, fixed positionally: 那個妖邪 deictic nà, then 那裡肯信 rhetorical nǎ — "how should he believe it?", a negation in the form of a question.
Eight Rules parried with his rake and said: "You rascally thing — so you too are a demon that turned sprite halfway along."
成精, to become a sprite through long cultivation. Bajie returns the 半路上 taunt word for word, which sets the symmetry the rest of the block is built on.
The monster said: "How do you know that I turned sprite halfway?"
認得 得 dé. The demon walks into the mirror-image of his own question, and the joke is that he cannot hear it coming.
Eight Rules said: "You know how to handle a copper mallet — I suppose you were hired at some silversmith's to work the bellows, got your hands on it, and stole it away."
那個銀匠家: 那 indefinite, nǎ, matching the demon's own 雇在那裡種園. 扯爐, to work the bellows; 得了手 得 dé; 偷將出來 將 jiāng.
The fiend said: "This is no silversmith's hammer.
An exact mirror of Bajie's 不是那築地之鈀 — same construction, same position in the exchange, same function of opening a verse.
Look:
The second 你看 verse-tag of the block, answering the first. The two boasts are laid out as a matched pair.
Nine petals gathered into the bud of a flower; / a single shaft, hollow-bored, an evergreen stem.
攢 is read cuán, "to cluster, to gather in" — pypinyin's default zǎn ("to hoard") is wrong here. 花骨朵, a flower-bud; 萬年青, the evergreen. The mallet's head is a lotus-bud.
It is not to be matched with things of the mortal world; / its provenance, besides, is named from an immortal garden.
出處 處 chù, "place of origin"; 還 hái, "besides." 凡間 間 jiān.
Green pod and purple kernel, grown old in the Jasper Pool; / plain in substance, clear in scent, sprung from an azure marsh.
綠房紫菂 are the lotus seed-pod and the seeds within it (菂, dì); 瑤池 is the Queen Mother's Jasper Pool. The weapon is a lotus, and the verse insists on it.
Because I laboured to knead and to temper it, / it is hard as steel, keen, and wholly numinous.
摶鍊 (tuán liàn), "to knead and to refine" — the vocabulary of alchemy applied to a weapon. The demon claims the making as his own work.
Spear, sabre, sword and halberd — none can match it; / axe and poleaxe, dagger-axe and lance dare not come near.
渾難賽: 難 nán, "hard to." Eight weapon-names in fourteen characters, a catalogue line of the kind these panegyrics use to fill the penultimate couplet.
Grant that his rake carries a keen enough edge — / let it touch my mallet, and the teeth will snap and fly."
湯 is a loan graph for 盪, "to strike against, to graze"; 著 resultative zháo; 折 zhé, "to snap off." 釘 here means the rake's teeth. The couplet answers Bajie's closing couplet exactly, boast for boast.
The two boasts are built to match. Each runs ninety-six characters of prose into eighty-four of verse; each opens with a guess at the other's low trade — a hired gardener's rake, a silversmith's hammer — and each closes with 你看 and a colon. The demon even answers Bajie's final couplet in kind, meeting nine rake-teeth with a threat to snap them off. Two hundred and forty characters of the fight are spent on display before a blow is exchanged, and the display is the point: in this novel a weapon's standing is a genealogical claim, and a claim must be answered.
What the mallet turns out to be is worth attention. It is a lotus — nine petals gathered into a bud, a hollow evergreen stalk, the green pod and purple seeds of the seed-head, the Jasper Pool, an azure marsh. The lotus is the emblem of Buddhist purity and of the Queen Mother's garden alike, and here it has been kneaded and tempered (摶鍊) into a thing for crushing skulls. The demon holds his court, keeps his accounts, argues his case at law, and fights with a flower; the chapter has been assembling that incongruity since he first came out of his gate in golden mail with a sprig of waterweed in his teeth.