by Wu Cheng-En
“Hurry up then, and don't have any more wicked thoughts.” With that they each went their separate ways.
A moment later Monkey saw the Tang Priest sitting gloomily beside the path. He went up to him and said, “Why aren't you travelling, master? What are you still here for?” Sanzang looked up.
“Where have you been?” he asked. “I couldn't move without you, so I had to sit here and wait till you came back.”
“I went to visit the Old Dragon King of the Eastern Sea to ask him for some tea,” Monkey replied.
“Disciple, a religious man shouldn't tell lies. How can you say that you went to drink tea at the dragon king's place when you haven't been gone two hours?”
“I can tell you quite truthfully,” replied Monkey with a smile, “that with my somersault cloud I can cover thirty-six thousand miles in a single bound. That's how I got there and back.”
“When I spoke to you a little severely you resented it and went off in a huff,” said Sanzang. “It was all right for a clever person like you-you begged yourself some tea. But I couldn't go, and had to stay here hungry. You ought to be sorry for me.”
“If you're hungry, master, I'll go and beg you some food,” suggested Monkey.
“No need,” his master replied, “there are still some dry provisions in my bundle that the high warden's mother gave me. Take that bowl and fetch some water. When we've eaten some of it we can be on our way.”
Opening the bundle, Brother Monkey found some scones made of coarse flour, which he took out and gave to his master. He also noticed the dazzling brocade tunic and the hat with inlaid golden patterns.
“Did you bring this tunic and hat with you from the East?” he asked. Sanzang had to make something up on the spot.
“I used to wear them when I was young. With that hat on you can recite scriptures without ever having been taught them, and if you wear that tunic you can perform the rituals without any practice.”
“Dear master, please let me wear them,” Monkey pleaded.
“I don't know whether they'll fit you, but if you can get them on, you can wear them.” Monkey took off the old white tunic, put the brocade one on instead, and found that it was a perfect fit. Then he put the hat on his head. As soon as he had the hat on, Sanzang stopped eating and silently recited the Band-tightening Spell.
“My head aches, my head aches,” cried Brother Monkey, but his master went on and recited the spell several times more. Monkey, now rolling in agony, tore the hat to shreds, and Sanzang stopped reciting the spell for fear he would break the golden band. The moment the spell stopped the pain finished. Reaching up to feel his head, Monkey found something like a golden wire clamped so tightly around it that he could not wrench or snap it off. It had already taken root there. He took the needle out of his ear, forced it inside the band, and pulled wildly at it. Sanzang, again frightened that he would snap it, started to recite the spell once more. The pain was so bad this time that Monkey stood on his head, turned somersaults, and went red in the face and ears. His eyes were popping and his body went numb. Seeing the state he was in, Sanzang had to stop, and the pain stopped again too.
“Master,” said Monkey, “What a curse you put on me to give me a headache like that.”
“I didn't put a curse on you, I recited the Band-tightening Spell,” Sanzang replied.
“Say it again and see what happens,” said Monkey, and when Sanzang did as he asked, Monkey's head ached again. “Stop, stop,” he shouted, “the moment you started reciting it my head ached. Why did you do it?”
“Will you accept my instruction now?” Sanzang asked.
“Yes,” Monkey replied.
“Will you misbehave again in future?”
“I certainly won't,” said Monkey.
Although he had made this verbal promise, he was still nurturing evil thoughts, and he shook his needle in the wind till it was as thick as a ricebowl. He turned on the Tang Priest, and was on the point of finishing him off when the terrified Sanzang recited the spell two or three more times.
The monkey dropped his cudgel and fell to the ground, unable to raise his arm, “Master,” he shouted, “I've seen the light. Stop saying the spell, please stop.”
“How could you have the perfidy to try to kill me?” asked Sanzang.
“I'd never have dared,” said Brother Monkey, adding, “who taught you that spell, master?”
“An old lady I met just now,” replied Sanzang. Monkey exploded with rage.
“Tell me no more,” he said, “I'm sure and certain the old woman was that Guanyin. How could she do this to me? Just you wait. I'm going to the Southern Sea to kill her.”
“As she taught me this spell,” Sanzang replied, “she's bound to know it herself. If you go after her and she recites it, that will be the end of you.” Seeing the force of his argument, Monkey changed his mind and gave up the idea of going. He knelt down and pleaded pitifully, “Master, she's used this to force me to go with you to the West. I shan't go to make trouble for her, and you must recite scriptures instead of saying that spell all the time. I promise to protect you, and I shall always be true to this vow.”
“In that case you'd better help me back on the horse,” Sanzang replied. Monkey, who had been plunged into despair, summoned up his spirits, tightened the belt round his brocade tunic, got the horse ready, gathered up the luggage, and hurried off towards the West. If you want to know what other stories there are about the journey, then listen to the explanation in the next installment.
Chapter 15
On the Coiled Snake Mountain the Gods Give Secret Help
In the Eagle's Sorrow Gorge the Thought-Horse Is Reined in
Monkey looked after the Tang Priest as they headed West. They had been travelling for several days in the twelfth month of the year, with its freezing North winds and biting cold. Their path wound along overhanging precipices and steep cliffs, and they crossed range after range of dangerous mountains. One day Sanzang heard the sound of water as he rode along, and he turned around to shout, “Monkey, where's that sound of water coming from?”
“As I remember, this place is called Eagle's Sorrow Gorge in the Coiled Snake Mountain. It must be the water in the gorge.” Before he had finished speaking, the horse reached the edge of the gorge. Sanzang reined in and looked. He saw:
A thin cold stream piercing the clouds,
Deep, clear waves shining red in the sun.
The sound shakes the night rain and is heard in the quiet valley,
Its color throws up a morning haze that obscures the sky.
A thousand fathoms of flying waves spit jade;
The torrent's roar howls in the fresh wind.
The current leads to the misty waves of the sea;
The egret and the cormorant never meet by a fisherman.
As master and disciple watched they heard a noise in the gorge as a dragon emerged from the waves, leapt up the cliff, and grabbed at Sanzang. In his alarm Monkey dropped the luggage, lifted Sanzang off his horse, turned, and fled. The dragon, unable to catch him up, swallowed the white horse, saddle and all, at a single gulp, then disappeared once more beneath the surface of the water. Monkey made his master sit down on a high peak and went back to fetch the horse and the luggage. When he found that the horse had gone and only the luggage was left, he carried the luggage up to his master and put it down before him.
“Master,” he said, “that damned dragon has disappeared without a trace. It gave our horse such a fright that it ran away.”
“However are we going to find the horse, disciple?”
“Don't worry, don't worry, wait here while I go and look for it.”
He leapt into the sky, whistling. Putting up his hand to shade his fiery eyes with their golden pupils, he looked all around below him, but saw no sign of the horse. He put his cloud away and reported, “Master, that horse of ours must have been eaten by the dragon-I can't see it anywhere.”
“Disciple,” Sanzang protested, “how could that wre
tched creature have a mouth big enough to swallow a horse that size, saddle and all? I think the horse must have slipped its bridle in a panic and run into that valley. Go and have a more careful look.”
“You don't know about my powers,” Monkey replied. “These eyes of mine can see what's happening three hundred miles away, and within that range I can even spot a dragonfly spreading its wings. There's no way I could miss a big horse like that.”
“But we'll never get across those thousands of mountains and rivers.” As he spoke, his tears fell like rain. The sight of him crying was too much for Brother Monkey, who flared up and shouted, “Stop being such an imbecile, master. Sit there and wait while I find that wretch and make him give us back our horse.”
“You mustn't go,” said Sanzang, grabbing hold of him. “I'm frightened that he'll come creeping out again and kill me this time. Then I'll be dead as well as the horse, and that would be terrible.”
This made Monkey angrier than ever, and he roared with a shout like thunder, “You're hopeless, absolutely hopeless. You want a horse to ride but you won't let me go. This way you'll be sitting there looking at the luggage for the rest of your life.”
As he was yelling ferociously in a flaming temper, a voice was heard in the sky that said, “Don't be angry, Great Sage; stop crying, younger brother of the Tang Emperor. We are gods sent by the Bodhisattva Guanyin to give hidden protection to the pilgrim who is fetching the scriptures.”
At these words Sanzang immediately bowed, but Monkey said, “Tell me your names, you lot.”
“We are the Six Dings, the Six Jias, the Revealers of the Truth of the Five Regions, the Four Duty Gods, and the Eighteen Protectors of the Faith; we shall take it in turns to be in attendance every day.”
“Who starts today?”
“The Dings and Jias, the Four Duty Gods, and the Protectors of the Faith will take turns. Of the Revealers of the Five Regions, the Gold-headed Revealer will always be with you by day and by night.”
“Very well then,” said Monkey, “all those of you who are not on duty may withdraw. The Six Ding Heavenly Generals, the Duty God of the Day, and the Revealers of the Truth will stay here to protect my master, while I shall go to find that evil dragon in the gorge and make him give our horse back.” The gods all did as they were told, and Sanzang, now greatly relieved, sat on the cliff and gave Monkey detailed instructions.
“There's no need for you to worry,” said the splendid Monkey King as he tightened the belt round his brocade tunic, folded up his tiger-skin kilt, grasped his cudgel, went to the edge of the gorge, and stood amid clouds and mist above the water. “Give us back our horse, mud loach, give us back our horse,” he shouted.
Now when the dragon had eaten Sanzang's white horse it lay low in the stream, hiding its miraculous powers and nourishing its vital nature. When it heard someone shouting and cursing it and demanding the horse back, it was unable to hold back its temper.
Leaping up through the waves it asked, “How dare you make so free with your insults?”
The moment he saw it, Monkey roared, “Don't go! Give us back our horse!” and swung his cudgel at the dragon's head. Baring its fangs and waving its claws, the dragon went for him. It was a noble battle that the pair of them fought beside the ravine.
The dragon stretched its sharp claws,
The monkey raised his gold-banded cudgel.
The beard of one hung in threads of white jade,
The other's eyes flashed like golden lamps.
The pearls in the dragon's beard gave off a coloured mist,
The iron club in the other's hands danced like a whirlwind.
One was a wicked son who had wronged his parents;
The father, the evil spirit who had worsted heavenly generals.
Both had been through trouble and suffering,
And now they were to use their abilities to win merit.
Coming and going, fighting and resting, wheeling and turning, they battled on for a very long time until the dragon's strength was exhausted and his muscles numb. Unable to resist any longer, it turned around, dived into the water, and lay low at the bottom of the stream. It pretended to be deaf as the Monkey King cursed and railed at it, and did not emerge again.
Monkey could do nothing, so he had to report to Sanzang, “Master, I swore at that ogre till it came out, and after fighting me for ages it fled in terror. It's now in the water and won't come out again.”
“Are you sure that it really ate our horse?” Sanzang asked.
“What a thing to say,” said Monkey, “If it hadn't eaten the horse, it wouldn't have dared to say a word or fight against me.”
“When you killed that tiger the other day you said you had ways of making dragons and tigers submit to you, so how comes it that you couldn't beat this one today?” Monkey had never been able to stand provocation, so when Sanzang mocked him this time he showed something of his divine might.
“Say no more, say no more. I'll have another go at it and then we'll see who comes out on top.”
The Monkey King leapt to the edge of the ravine, and used a magical way of throwing rivers and seas into turmoil to make the clear waters at the bottom of the Eagle's Sorrow Gorge as turbulent as the waves of the Yellow River in spate. The evil dragon's peace was disturbed as he lurked in the depths of the waters, and he thought, “How true it is that blessings never come in pairs and troubles never come singly. Although I've been accepting my fate here for less than a year since I escaped the death penalty for breaking the laws of Heaven, I would have to run into this murderous devil.”
The more he thought about it, the angrier he felt, and unable to bear the humiliation a moment longer he jumped out of the stream cursing, “Where are you from, you bloody devil, coming here to push me around?”
“Never you mind where I'm from,” Monkey replied. “I'll only spare your life if you give back that horse.”
“That horse of yours is in my stomach, and I can't sick it up again, can I? I'm not giving it back, so what about it?”
“If you won't give it back, then take this! I'm only killing you to make you pay for the horse's life.” The two of them began another bitter struggle under the mountain, and before many rounds were up the little dragon could hold out no longer. With a shake of his body he turned himself into a water-snake and slithered into the undergrowth.
The Monkey King chased it with his cudgel in his hands, but when he pushed the grass aside to find the snake the three gods inside his body exploded, and smoke poured from his seven orifices. He uttered the magic word om, thus calling out the local tutelary god and the god of the mountain, who both knelt before him and reported their arrival.
“Put out your ankles,” Monkey said, “while I give you five strokes each of my cudgel to work off my temper.” The two gods kowtowed and pleaded pitifully, “We beg the Great Sage to allow us petty gods to report.”
“What have you got to say?” Monkey asked.
“We didn't know when you emerged after your long sufferings, Great Sage,” they said, “which is why we didn't come to meet you. We beg to be forgiven.”
“In that case,” Monkey said, “I won't beat you, but I'll ask you this instead: where does that devil dragon in the Eagle's Sorrow Gorge come from, and why did he grab my master's white horse and eat it?”
“Great Sage, you never had a master,” said the two gods, “and you were a supreme Immortal with an undisturbed essence who would not submit to Heaven or Earth, so how does this master's horse come in?”
“You two don't know that either,” Monkey replied. “Because of that business of offending against Heaven, I had to suffer for five hundred years. Now I've been converted by the Bodhisattva Guanyin, and she's sent a priest who's come from the Tang Empire to rescue me. She told me to become his disciple and go to the Western Heaven to visit the Buddha and ask for the scriptures. As we were passing this way we lost my master's white horse.”
“Ah, so that's what's happening,” the gods said. �
��There never used to be any evil creatures in the stream, which ran wide and deep with water so pure that crows and magpies never dared to fly across it. This was because they would mistake their own reflections in it for other birds of their own kind and often go plummeting into the water. That's why it's called Eagle's Sorrow Gorge. Last year, when the Bodhisattva Guanyin was on her way to find a man to fetch the scriptures, she rescued a jade dragon and sent it to wait here for the pilgrim without getting up to any trouble. But when it's hungry it comes up on the bank to catch a few birds or a roedeer to eat. We can't imagine how it could be so ignorant as to clash with the Great Sage.”
“The first time he and I crossed swords we whirled around for a few rounds,” Brother Monkey replied. “The second time I swore at him but he wouldn't come out, so I stirred up his stream with a spell to throw rivers and seas into turmoil, after which he came out and wanted to have another go at me. He didn't realize how heavy my cudgel was, and he couldn't parry it, so he changed himself into a water snake and slithered into the undergrowth. I chased him and searched for him, but he's vanished without a trace.”
“Great Sage, you may not be aware that there are thousands of interconnected tunnels in this ravine, which is why the waters here run so deep. There is also a tunnel entrance round here that he could have slipped into. There's no need for you to be angry, Great Sage, or to search for it. If you want to catch the creature, all you have to do is to ask Guanyin to come here, and it will naturally submit.”
On receiving this suggestion Monkey told the local deity and the mountain god to come with him to see Sanzang and tell him all about what had happened previously. “If you go to ask the Bodhisattva to come here, when will you ever be back?” he asked, adding, “I'm terribly cold and hungry.”
Before the words were out of his mouth they heard the voice of the Gold-headed Revealer shouting from the sky, “Great Sage, there's no need for you to move. I'll go and ask the Bodhisattva to come here.” Monkey, who was delighted, replied, “This is putting you to great trouble, but please be as quick as you can.” The Revealer then shot off on his cloud to the Southern Sea. Monkey told the mountain god and the local deity to protect his master, and sent the Duty God of the Day to find some vegetarian food, while he himself patrolled the edge of the ravine.