石匣哀吟 The Lament in the Stone Chest
行者聞言，演了一會，徑直尋到宮後看，果有一個石匣，卻像人家槽房裡的豬槽，又似人間一口石棺材之樣，量量足有六尺長短。卻伏在上面，聽了一會，只聽得三藏在裡面嚶嚶的哭哩。行者不言語，側耳再聽，那師父銼得牙響，哏了一聲道：行者闻言，演了一会，径直寻到宫后看，果有一个石匣，却像人家槽房里的猪槽，又似人间一口石棺材之样，量量足有六尺长短。却伏在上面，听了一会，只听得三藏在里面嘤嘤的哭哩。行者不言语，侧耳再听，那师父锉得牙响，哏了一声道：
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this, Pilgrim played out his part a while, then went straight behind the palace to look; and there indeed was a stone chest, like the pig-trough in a household's feeding shed, or like a stone coffin of the human world. Measured, it was a full six chǐ in length.
量量 is verbal reduplication, 量 read liáng ("to measure"), not the nominal liàng. 六尺 is kept untransliterated as six chǐ — roughly the length of a man, which is the point of the comparison. 長短 長 cháng. The double simile moves from pig-trough to coffin in a single breath.
He lay down upon it and listened a while, and heard Tripitaka inside, weeping in small stifled sobs.
聽得: 得 dé. 嚶嚶 is an onomatopoeic reduplicative for faint, muffled weeping; 哩 the vernacular final particle, li.
Pilgrim said nothing, but turned his ear and listened again. The master ground his teeth till they rasped, and groaned aloud, saying:
銼得牙響: 得 the complement particle de, "ground his teeth so that they sounded." 哏 (gén) is a vernacular graph for a groan or grunt forced out through clenched teeth. The colon marks the verse-tag: the following eight lines are the master's lament.
I curse the River-Float fate that bore this guilt — / from birth, how many water-woes have wound about me.
江流 is Tripitaka's infant name, given when he was set adrift on a river as a newborn and taken up by the abbot of the Golden Mountain monastery. He is punning bitterly on his own name: the 愆 (qiān, "fault, offence") is inherited, not committed.
Out of my mother's womb I was tossed on the billows; / going west to worship the Buddha, I sink in a fathomless deep.
出娘胎 refers to the same origin: the infant set on the water. 拜佛西天 — 佛 invariably fó. The couplet sets the beginning and the present of his life side by side, and finds water in both.
Before, at the Black River, my body met with peril; / now the ice breaks, and my life goes down to the springs.
有難: 難 read nàn, the noun "calamity, peril," not nán ("difficult"). 黑河 refers back to the Black River of chapter 43, where he was likewise seized in water. 歸泉, to return to the Yellow Springs — to die.
I know not whether my disciples can come at all — / shall I win the true scriptures, and see my old garden again?
可得真經: 得 dé, attainment. The lament closes on the two questions that organize the whole pilgrimage — the scriptures and the return — and leaves both open.
The container is described before its occupant is heard, and the description does the work: a stone chest the size of a pig-trough, or of a coffin, six chǐ long. Tripitaka is boxed at the bottom of a river, stored as meat and shaped as a corpse, and the narrator lets the two similes stand together without choosing between them. It is one of the bleaker images of his captivity in the novel, and it is reached in a single sentence of plain measurement.
The lament is a regulated verse in eight seven-syllable lines, rhyming on the 先 rhyme-group (愆, 纏, 淵, 泉, 園) with the opening line drawn into the rhyme. Its argument is biographical and it turns on water throughout: the infant set adrift on the river, the name 江流 taken from that drifting, the seizure at the Black River, and now the ice of the Tongtian. Tripitaka reads his life as a single element pursuing him, and the reading is not wrong — the pilgrimage's water-crossings have gone badly for him with some consistency. What is characteristic is the closing turn: not a prayer, and not a resolution, but two unanswered questions about the scriptures and the road home.