皂白原因 The Rights and Wrongs of It
菩薩道：「且說那皂白原因來我聽。」行者即將那打殺草寇前後始終，細陳了一遍。卻說唐僧因他打死多人，心生怨恨，不分皂白，遂念緊箍兒咒，趕他幾次。上天無路，入地無門，特來告訴菩薩。菩薩道：「唐三藏奉旨投西，一心要秉善為僧，決不輕傷性命。似你有無量神通，何苦打殺許多草寇？草寇雖是不良，到底是個人身，不該打死。比那妖禽怪獸、鬼魅精魔不同。那個打死，是你的功績；這人身打死，還是你的不仁。但祛退散，自然救了你師父。據我公論，還是你的不善。」菩萨道：「且说那皂白原因来我听。」行者即将那打杀草寇前后始终，细陈了一遍。却说唐僧因他打死多人，心生怨恨，不分皂白，遂念紧箍儿咒，赶他几次。上天无路，入地无门，特来告诉菩萨。菩萨道：「唐三藏奉旨投西，一心要秉善为僧，决不轻伤性命。似你有无量神通，何苦打杀许多草寇？草寇虽是不良，到底是个人身，不该打死。比那妖禽怪兽、鬼魅精魔不同。那个打死，是你的功绩；这人身打死，还是你的不仁。但祛退散，自然救了你师父。据我公论，还是你的不善。」
逐句解 Line by line
The Bodhisattva said: “Set out the whole cause of this black and white, and let me hear it.”
She answers his complaint by adopting his own word, 皂白, which makes the examination he asked for the exact business of the scene.
Pilgrim then took the beating and killing of the bandits from beginning to end and laid the whole of it out in detail.
將 is the disposal coverb, jiāng — it takes up the object for the verb that follows — not the jiàng of military rank.
Because the Tang Monk had taken it hard that so many men were struck dead, resentment grew in his heart; he would not sort the black from the white, but recited the Tight-Fillet Spell and drove him off several times.
不分皂白 is the fixed idiom, with 分 at fēn throughout the corpus. The block opens on 卻說, the narrative-resumption formula, which here introduces the content of Wukong's report rather than a change of scene — one of four occurrences of the formula in this chapter.
With no road up to Heaven and no gate down into the earth, he had come expressly to lay the matter before the Bodhisattva.
上天無路，入地無門 is a fixed antithetical pair for total impasse; the two negations are formally identical and are kept so in translation.
The Bodhisattva said: “The Tang Monk went west by imperial command, single-hearted in his resolve to hold to goodness as a monk, and he would never lightly injure a living thing.
為僧 is copular 為 again, wéi — to be a monk — matching 為人 in the previous passage. 一心 takes mechanical sandhi to yì before the first-tone 心.
“With powers as measureless as yours, why go to the trouble of striking so many bandits dead?
無量 takes 量 at liàng, the reckoning sense — that which cannot be measured — against the liáng of 忖量 at the chapter's opening. 似 is held at sì corpus-wide.
“Bandits though they were, and no good men, they had human bodies after all, and should not have been beaten to death.
到底 marks the concession: whatever else is true of them, the one fact that governs is 人身, a human body.
“That is not the same as your monstrous birds and strange beasts, your goblins and spirit-demons.
比 sets the two classes against each other, and 不同 states the finding; the four-graph pairs 妖禽怪獸 and 鬼魅精魔 exhaust the category being excluded.
“Those, killed, are set to your credit; these, having human bodies, killed, are set against you as a want of humanity.
One sentence in the source, split by the source division only at its internal ；. The two members are strictly parallel — 那個打死 against 這人身打死, 功績 against 不仁 — so they are rejoined as one segment. 不仁 is the Confucian term of art, the absence of 仁, and the Bodhisattva reaches for it rather than for a Buddhist word.
“You had only to drive them off and scatter them, and you would naturally have saved your master.
散 is the verb ‘to scatter, disperse’, sàn, not the adjectival sǎn of 散碎. The line is the practical heart of the ruling: the objection is to the killing, not to the defence.
“By my own judgment of the matter, the fault is still yours.”
據我公論 closes the ruling with the language of adjudication — 公論 is the impartial verdict — which is what Wukong asked for and not what he wanted.
Wukong came for vindication and receives a judgment instead. The Bodhisattva takes his own metaphor, hears the case out in full, and finds against him — and the finding is the more damaging for being reasoned rather than angry. She grants everything he might have hoped: Tripitaka's good faith, the provocation, his own vast powers. Then she uses the powers against him. It is because he could have done anything that he cannot plead necessity.
The distinction she draws is the moral architecture of the whole novel stated outright. Demons, monsters and spirit-beasts may be destroyed and the destruction counts as merit; beings with 人身, a human body, may not. This is why the pilgrimage can be a sequence of violent combats without becoming a violation of the first precept — and why the bandits of the previous chapter, who are merely wicked men, break the pattern so badly.
Her Chinese is worth noticing. 不仁 is Confucian vocabulary, not Buddhist, and 公論 belongs to the language of the magistrate's court. The Bodhisattva of Compassion delivers her ruling in the idiom of secular ethics and civil judgment, which may be a concession to the plaintiff standing in front of her — Wukong has just quoted Mencius at himself two passages earlier.