by Unknown
With thunder gods guarding Divine Mists Hall
I leaped and fought to Hall of Perfect Light.
All flustered were the ministers at court,
And all divine officers were most confused.
I raised my rod to topple the Dipper Hall
And, turning, smashed the South Pole Palace.
When Emperor Jade saw how fierce was my rod,
Tathāgata was asked to face my wrath.
’Twas natural for a fighter to win or lose,
But harsh confinement was my certain lot,
Which lasted for a full five hundred years;
Then came kind counsels from South Sea’s Guanyin.
There was, she told me, a priest of Great Tang
Who offered to Heaven a stupendous vow:
To save the souls from the City of Death,
He would seek scriptures from the Spirit Mount.
But demons infested the westward way;
The journey thus was no convenient trek.
Knowing the rod had in the world no match,
She begged me to be his guardian on the way.
Perverts, touched by it, would go to Hades,
Their bones turning to flour, their flesh to dust.
Every where fiends had died beneath the rod,
In hundreds and thousands and countless scores.
Above, it busted the Dipper Palace;
Below, it smashed up all of Darkness Hall.
In Heaven it chased the Nine Planetoids
And wounded on Earth the summoner-judge.
It dropped from midair to rule mountains and streams,
Much stronger than Jupiter’s new year sword.
To guard the Tang Monk I bank on this rod,
Having beaten this world’s all monster-gods!
When he heard these words, the demon trembled and shook, though he risked his life and raised the scimitar to strike. Beaming broadly, the Monkey King met him with the iron rod. At first the two of them fought before the cave; after a while, they leaped up to do battle in midair. What a marvelous battle it was!
A treasure that fixed Heaven River’s depth
Was the rod, named Compliant, this world’s prize.
Such vaunting talents the demon displeased,
Who raised his scimitar with magic might.
A conflict before the door might one resolve.
How could any be spared in a midair fight?
After his own feelings one changed his looks;
One’s torso grew taller without delay.
They fought till clouds thickened in the sky
And fog drifted up from the ground.
That one made plans a few times to devour Tripitaka;
That one exercised his vast pow’r to guard the Tang Monk.
Because the Buddha wished the scriptures to impart,
Evil and good became clear, locked in bitter strife.
The old demon and the Great Sage fought for over twenty rounds, but no decision could be reached. When Eight Rules down below saw, however, how intense a battle the two of them were waging, he could no longer stand idly by. Mounting the wind, he leaped into the air and delivered a terrific blow with his rake, aiming it at the monster’s face. The demon was horrified, for he did not know that Eight Rules was a blunderer, someone without any real stamina. When he saw that long snout and those huge ears, the demon thought that the hands would also be heavy and the rake vicious. Abandoning his scimitar therefore, he turned and fled in defeat. “Chase him! Chase him!” shouted the Great Sage.
Relying on his companion’s authority, our Idiot raised high the muckrake and went after the fiend. When the old demon saw him approaching, he stood still before the mountain slope and, facing the wind, changed back into his original form. Opening wide his huge mouth, he wanted to swallow Eight Rules, who was so terrified by the sight that he dove quickly into the bushes by the wayside. He crawled in there, without regard for thorns or prickles and with no thought of the pain of the scratches on his head; trembling all over, he stayed in the bushes to see what would develop.
In a moment, Pilgrim arrived, and the old fiend also opened wide his mouth to try to devour him, little knowing that this was exactly what Pilgrim desired. Putting away his iron rod, Pilgrim ran up to the fiend, who swallowed him in one gulp. Our Idiot in the bushes was so shaken that he muttered to himself, “How stupid is this BanHorsePlague! When you saw the fiend coming to devour you, why didn’t you run away? Why did you go up to him instead? You might still be a priest today inside his stomach, but tomorrow you’d be a big pile of droppings!” Only after the demon left in triumph did our Idiot crawl out from the bushes and slip away on the road he came.
We tell you now about Tripitaka, who waited with Sha Monk beneath the mountain slope. All of a sudden they saw Eight Rules running back and panting heavily. Horrified, Tripitaka said, “Eight Rules, how is it that you look so desperate? Where is Wukong?” “Elder Brother,” sobbed our Idiot, “has been swallowed by the monster-spirit in one gulp.” When he heard this, Tripitaka collapsed on the ground, and only after a long time could he stamp his feet and pound his chest. “O disciple!” he cried. “I thought that you were so adept in subduing the fiends that you could lead me to see Buddha in the Western Heaven. How could I know that you would perish in the hands of this fiend? Alas! Alas! The merit of this disciple and others have all turned to dust now!”
The master was beside himself with grief. But look at our Idiot! Instead of trying to comfort his master he called out, “Sha Monk, bring me the luggage. The two of us will divide it up.” “Second Elder Brother,” said Sha Monk, “why do you want to divide it?” “When we have divided it,” replied Eight Rules, “each of us can go our own way; you can return to Flowing Sand River to be a cannibal, and I’ll go back to the Old Gao Village to see my wife. We’ll sell the white horse, and that should enable us to buy a coffin for our master in his old age!” The elder was already heaving in anguish. When he heard these words, he began to wail, calling on Heaven to help him all the time and we shall leave him there for the moment.
We tell you about that old demon, who thought it a smart thing to have swallowed Pilgrim. When he reached his own cave, the various fiends came to greet him and asked him about the battle. “I caught one,” said the old demon. Delighted, the second demon asked, “Which one did you catch, Big Brother?” “It’s Pilgrim Sun,” replied the old demon. “Where have you caught him?” asked the second demon. The old demon said, “He has been swallowed into my stomach in one gulp.”
Horrified, the third demon said, “O Big Brother, I’m sorry I haven’t told you, but Pilgrim Sun is inedible!” “I’m very edible!” said the Great Sage in the belly. “Moreover, I satisfy! You’ll never be hungry again!” The little fiends were so frightened that one of them said, “Great King, it’s terrible! Pilgrim Sun is talking inside your stomach!”
“I’m not afraid of his talking!” said the old demon. “If I have the ability to devour him, you think I have no ability to handle him? Go and boil me some salt water quickly. Let me pour it down my stomach and throw him up. Then we can have him slowly fried and eaten with wine.”
The little fiends indeed went and brought back half a pan of hot salt water, which the old demon immediately drained. Opening wide his mouth, he retched in earnest, but our Great Sage seemed to have taken roots in the stomach. He did not even budge. The old demon pressed his own throat and retched again and again until he became dizzy and dim of sight. Even his gall seemed to have been busted! But Pilgrim remained unmoveable as ever. After he panted for awhile, the old demon cried, “Pilgrim Sun, aren’t you coming out?”
“It’s too early!” replied Pilgrim. “I don’t feel like coming out!” “Why not?” asked the old demon. “You’re not a very smart monster-spirit!” said Pilgrim. “Since I became a monk, I have led a rather penurious life. It’s the cool autumn now, and all I have on is an unlined shirt. This belly of yours is quite warm, and it has no draf
t. This is exactly where I should spend my winter.”
On hearing this, all the fiends said, “Great King, Pilgrim Sun wants to spend the winter in your belly.” “If he wants to do that,” said the old demon, “I’ll practice meditation. With my magic of hibernation, I’ll not eat for a whole winter and starve that BanHorsePlague.”
“My son,” said the Great Sage, “you are so dumb! On this journey in which old Monkey is accompanying the Tang Monk to go seek scriptures, we passed through Canton and I picked up a portable frying pan, excellent for cooking chop suey.3 If I take time to enjoy your liver, chitterlings, stomach, and lungs, I think I can last easily till spring!”
“O Elder Brother,” cried a horrified second demon, “this ape is capable of doing this!” “O Elder Brother,” said the third demon, “it’s all right to let him eat the chop suey, but I wonder where he is going to set up the frying pan.” “On the fork of his chest bone, of course!” replied Pilgrim. “That’s bad!” cried the third demon. “If he sets up the pan there and starts a fire, you’ll sneeze if the smoke rises to your nostrils, won’t you?” “Don’t worry,” said Pilgrim, chuckling. “Let old Monkey punch a hole through his head with my golden-hooped rod. That will serve both as a skylight and a chimney.”
On hearing this, the old demon became quite frightened, even though he pretended to be brave and said, “Brothers, don’t be afraid. Bring me our medicinal wine. I’ll drink a few goblets and kill that ape with the drug.” Smiling to himself, Pilgrim said, “When old Monkey caused great disturbance in Heaven five hundred years ago, he devoured the elixir of Laozi, the wine of the Jade Emperor, the peaches of the Lady Queen Mother, and all kinds of dainties like phoenix marrow and dragon liver. What, in fact, have I not tasted before? What kind of medicinal wine is this that he dares use to drug me?”
After the little fiends went and bailed two pots of the medicinal wine, they filled a large goblet and handed it to the old demon. The moment he took it in his hands, however, our Great Sage could smell the wine’s fragrance even inside the belly of the demon. “I won’t allow him to drink it!” he said to himself. Dear Great Sage! With a twist of his head, he turned his mouth into the shape of a trumpet which he placed immediately below the throat of the old demon. When the old demon drank in one gulp the goblet of wine, it was immediately swallowed by Pilgrim. When he drank the second goblet, it, too, was swallowed by Pilgrim, and in this way seven or eight goblets went down the throat of the demon. Putting down the goblet, the old demon said, “I’m not drinking anymore. It used to be that two goblets of this wine would make my stomach feel like fire. I drank seven or eight goblets just now, and my face hasn’t even reddened!”
But our Great Sage, you see, could not take too much wine. After he had swallowed seven or eight gobletfuls from the old demon, he became so delirious that he began to do calisthenics without pause inside the demon’s belly. He did jumping jacks and cartwheels; he let loose high kicks; grabbing the liver he used it for a swing, and he went through handstands and somersaults, prancing madly here and there. So unbearable was the pain that the fiend slumped to the ground. We do not know whether he died or not; let’s listen to the explanation in the next chapter.
Notes
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
1. Staff of my will: the author of XYJ is punning on the phrase zhuzhang (last graph, first tone), which means to manage, to control, or to hold one’s own opinion, and the phrase zhuzhang (last graph, fourth tone), which means, literally, the staff of a master or the staff of one’s will. At the end of chapter 50 in JW 2, the second line of the parallel couplet, “But Pilgrim, in a daze, knew not what to do ,” makes use of a similar pun, because the chapter closes on Pilgrim losing his rod to the demon king’s magic weapon. At the end of the present chapter, when Pilgrim regains his rod, the terminal couplet again plays on the same idea. And finally, in the paragraph immediately following this chapter’s opening poem, the pun, in fact, leads directly to the narrator’s allegorical interpretation of the incident with a phrase used several times before: “Thus it was that Pilgrim, using the mind to question the mind, regained control of himself , .” The poem, a passionate declaration of Sun Wukong’s deepest wish that uses the graph tong (the same, the identical, united as one) ten times in the short space of eight lines, also supports part of the argument we have made in the introduction in JW 1. The disciple as Monkey of the Mind is to be united quite literally with the human monk by progressively becoming part of the latter’s very self.
2. No rod to play with: a possible allusion to vaudville shows in which monkeys perform with stick or staff.
3. Kehan Bureau: . Kehan dadi is one of the Nine Monarchs (ji-uchen ) who form the pantheon of the Shenxiao school of Daoist deities. See entry on “Changshen dadi” in ET 1: 247.
4. Three Forbidden Enclosures: the sanyuan are three star groups consisting of the Purple Forbidden Enclosure (Ziwei yuan , so named because of an analogy with the imperial court), the Supreme Forbidden Enclosure (Taiwei yuan ), and the Celestial Market Enclosure (Tianshi yuan ). For discussions of these three star groups, see Ho Peng Yoke, The Astronomical Chapters of the Chin Shu (Paris, 1966), pp. 67, 76, and 84; SCC 3 (1970): 259–61; Edward H. Schafer, Pacing the Void: T’ang Approaches to the Stars (Berkeley, 1977), pp. 44–53.
5. Bāhu: a slight mistake in the XYJ text. The author has the constellation Bāhu or Shen , when he should have Rohiṇi or Xin . I have not corrected the error.
6. Seven mansions of the West: another textual error, for the constellations enumerated belong to the northern group.
7. Grand Assembly of Three Platforms: santan , the term may refer to the inner, central, and outer erected platforms (, , , ) of a specific area consecrated for Daoist ritual. See ZHDJDCD, pp. 560–61. Or it may be an abbreviation of Sanhui , during which the Daoist general community, the clerics, and lay persons for purpose of accurate registrations of births, deaths, and marriages. These assemblies are held during the first, seventh, and tenth month of the lunar year. Other rituals may include tithing and sharing of food.
8. Ning Qi: , a talented person in the Spring and Autumn period, who sought to serve the State of Qi’s Duke Huan (). When the duke met his guests at night on the meadow with blazing torches, Ning attracted his attention by singing loudly and beating the horns of his ox. See Lüshi chunqiu , j 19, 17b (SBBY).
9. Mr. Zhou at Red Cliff: the celebrated campaign at Red Cliff when Zhou Yu , general and strategist of the forces from the State of Wu, defeated the northern forces of Cao Cao by attacking with burning boats chained together. See the novel, Three Kingdoms, chapters 48–49.
10. Make . . . unfathomable: the first two lines of this poem parody a passage in the Confucian classic, Doctrine of the Mean 26, 9, on the way of heaven, earth, mountain, and water. For that last element, it says: “As for water, it may appear only a ladleful; but when we reach its unfathomable depths, we’ll see that turtles, iguanas, guanodons, dragons, fishes, and tortoises all live in them.”
11. Spilled jade ordinarily does not gurgle, but this line alludes to two lines of a poem by Lu Ji (261–303): “How the mountain spring gurgles: / The flying stream spills sounding jade , .” See the second poem titled “Zhao yin (Beckoning reclusion),” in Lu Shiheng ji , j 5, 3a (SBBY).
12. This and other quotations are descriptive names of the styles the fighters assumed in the boxing match.
13. This poem is a lyric written to the tune of “Moon Over West River.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
1. This poem is a lyric written to the tune of “Moon Over West River.”
2. Heart: literally “the place of a square inch ” in which the measurement is a stock metaphor for the heart. But as we have pointed out several times, the word heart (xin ), especially in premodern Chinese, also means mind.
3. This poetic line alludes to the familiar description of Buddha’s preaching that resulted in flowers raining down on his audience.
4. Bhikṣuṇi: this means, literally, a nun o
r an almswoman in Buddhism. But in the narrative context, it is most likely Mahāprajāpati, the Buddha’s aunt, who was also the first woman to be ordained.
5. The Eight Great Diamond Guardians: bada jin’gang is another name for the bada mingwang , the eight diamond-kings usually represented as fierce guardians of Vairocana. They are (Guanyin), (Maitreya), (Vajrahāsa), (Samantabhadra), (Vajrapāṇi), (Mañjuśrī), (Āryācalanātha), and (Kṣitigarbha).
6. See JW 1, chapter 6.
7. In the lengthy history of Laozi’s development from ancient sage to the high God of the Daoist religion, the story of his going through the Hangu Pass (a site of uncertain location) to convert the barbarians has been one of the most familiar and entertaining episodes. See Livia Kohn, God of the Dao: Lord Lao in History and Myth (Ann Arbor, 1998), pp. 1–28. For the location of Hangu Pass, see pp. 257–60.
8. Binlang: the text here has , which can be another form of the betel nut (Areca catechu) according to major Chinese lexicons. I have not been able to determine the meaning of the phrase so used in the story. Lévy, 2: 42, translates the nose ring as “passer la noix de coco,” and further speculates in his note on p. 1045 that “l’anneau passé dans le museau du buffle est taillé dans une noix de coco.” Although one lexicon did mention that the betel-nut resembles the coconut, their marked difference in size was also noted.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
1. Basic vow: benyuan , pūrvapraṇidāna, the basic or original vow of a buddha or bodhisattva.
2. A lyric written to the tune of “Moon Over West River,” with section two greatly altered from poem 11 of Zhang Boduan’s “Wuzhen pian” in Xiuzhen shishu. The original reads: “, , , °, , , .” See DZ 263, 4: 743.
3. Wisdom: zhengjue , saṁbodhi, a buddha’s wisdom or omniscience.
4. Popo: the word po in Chinese can mean an old woman in general or a grandmother (whether paternal or maternal or both depends on its usage in the region’s dialect). Since neither “old lady” or “Madam” has quite the same flavor, I have kept the original.