The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 4

by Unknown

  A nose of gold

  And fur like snow.

  She dwells in tunnels underground

  Where every part’s both safe and sound.

  A breath she nourished three hundred years before

  Had sent her a few times to Mount Spirit’s shore.

  Of candles and flowers once she ate her fill,

  She was banished by Tathāgata’s will

  To be Pagoda-Bearer’s cherished child;

  Prince Naṭa took her as his sister mild.

  She’s no mythic, sea-filling bird9 of the air

  Nor a turtle10 that a sacred mountain bears.

  Of Lei Huan’s magic sword11 she has no fear;

  To her, Lü Qian’s cutlass12 cannot go near.

  Scurrying here and there,

  She defies the River Han or Yangzi’s breadth and length;

  Scampering up and down

  The heights of Mount Tai or Heng is her special strength.

  When you behold her looks seductive and sweet,

  Who’d think that she’s a rodent-spirit in heat?

  Proud of her own vast magic powers, she casually picked up a pair of swords and began to parry left and right, to slash east and west, causing loud janglings and clangings. Though Pilgrim was somewhat stronger, he could not quite overtake her. A cold gust rose everywhere, and the waning moon had now lost its light. Look at the two of them engaged in this marvelous battle in the rear garden!

  A cold wind rose from the ground;

  The waning moon released faint light.

  Quiet was the Buddhist palace

  And forlorn the spirit porch.

  But the rear garden was some battlefield!

  Great Master Sun,

  A sage from Heav’n,

  And the furry girl,

  A queen of women,

  They took up a contest in magic powers.

  One hardened a woman’s heart to scold this black bonze;

  One widened his eyes of wisdom to glower at a girl.

  When the swords in both hands flew,

  Who’d recognize a “lady bodhisattva”?

  When the single rod attacked,

  He was more vicious than a live vajra-guardian.

  The golden-hooped crackled like thunderbolts;

  The white steel flashed forth like luminous stars.

  Kingfishers dropped from jade towers;

  Mandarin ducks broke on the golden hall.

  Apes wailed as the Szechwan moon dimmed;

  Wild geese called from the vast southern sky.

  The eighteen arhats

  All shouted bravos in secret;

  The thirty-two devas

  All became terror-stricken.

  As the Great Sage Sun became more and more energetic, the blows of his rod hardly ever slackening, the monster-spirit suspected that she would not be able to withstand him much longer. All at once her knitted brows gave her a plan, and she turned to flee.

  “Lawless wench!” shouted Pilgrim. “Where are you going? Surrender instantly!” But the monster-spirit refused to answer and kept retreating. She waited until Pilgrim was about to catch up with her and then ripped off her flower slipper from her left foot. Reciting a spell and blowing a mouthful of magic breath on it, she cried “Change!” and it changed into her appearance, both hands wielding the swords to attack. Her true self in a flash turned into a clear gust and disappeared. Alas! Is she not once more the star of calamity for Tripitaka? She swept into the abbot’s chamber and immediately abducted Tripitaka Tang. Silently and invisibly they rose straight to the clouds, and in a twinkling of an eye they reached Mount Void-Entrapping. After they entered the Bottomless Cave, she asked her little ones to prepare a vegetarian wedding feast, and there we shall leave them for the moment.

  We tell you now about Pilgrim, who fought on anxiously till he found an opening and struck down the monster-spirit with one blow of the rod. Only then did he discover that it was merely a flower slipper. Realizing that he had been duped, Pilgrim rushed back to see his master, but he was nowhere to be found. Only Idiot and Sha Monk were there, chattering noisily about something. Maddened, Pilgrim lost all regard for good or ill as he raised high his rod and screamed, “I’m going to slaughter both of you! I’m going to slaughter both of you!”

  Our Idiot was so terrified that he did not know where to flee. Sha Monk, however, was a general from Mount Spirit after all. When he saw that things had become complicated, he turned gentle and mild as he walked forward and went to his knees. “Elder Brother,” he said, “I think I know what the matter is. You want to strike both of us dead so that you can go home and not go rescue Master.”

  “I’ll slaughter both of you,” replied Pilgrim, “and then I’ll go rescue him by myself.”

  “Elder Brother, how can you speak like that?” said Sha Monk with a smile. “Without the two of us, you’ll be reduced to the condition of the proverb:

  One silk fiber is no thread;

  A single hand cannot clap.

  O Elder Brother! Who’s going to look after the luggage and the horse for you?

  Better that we emulate Guan and Bao13 dividing their gold

  Than to imitate Sun and Pang14 in their matching of wits.

  As the ancients said,

  To fight the tiger you need brothers of the same blood;

  To go to war requires a troop of fathers and sons.

  I beg you to spare us from this beating. By morning we’ll unite with you in mind and effort to go search for Master.”

  Though Pilgrim had vast magic powers, he was also a most sensible person. When he saw Sha Monk pleading like that, he at once relented, saying, “Eight Rules, Sha Monk, get up, both of you. We have to exert ourselves tomorrow to find Master.” When Idiot learned that he was spared, he was ready to promise Pilgrim half of the sky! “O Elder Brother,” he said, “let old Hog take care of everything!” With so much on their minds the three brothers, of course, could hardly sleep. How they wished that

  One nod of their heads would bring forth the rising sun,

  One blow of their breaths would scatter all the stars!

  Sitting up till dawn, the three of them immediately prepared to leave. Some of the monks in the monastery soon appeared, asking, “Where are the venerable fathers going?”

  “It’s hard for me to say this!” replied Pilgrim, chuckling. “I boasted yesterday that I would catch the monster-spirit for you. I haven’t succeeded, but I have lost our master instead. We’re about to go find him.”

  Growing fearful, the monks said, “Venerable Father, such a small matter of ours has now caused your master trouble. Where do you plan to go to look for him?” “There’ll be a place for us to look,” replied Pilgrim.

  “In that case,” said one of the monks quickly, “there’s no need to hurry. Please have some breakfast first.” Thereupon they brought in several bowls of rice soup, and Eight Rules finished them all. “Good monks!” he cried. “After we have found our master, we’ll return for some more fun!”

  “So you still want to come back here to eat!” said Pilgrim. “Why don’t you go to the Devarāja Hall instead and see if that girl is still around?”

  “No, she isn’t, she isn’t!” said another priest hurriedly. “She stayed there for one night, but she vanished the next day.”

  In great delight Pilgrim at once took leave of the monks and asked Eight Rules and Sha Monk to tote the luggage and lead the horse to head for the east. “You’ve made a mistake, Elder Brother,” said Eight Rules. “Why do you want to head for the east instead?”

  “How could you know?” asked Pilgrim. “That girl who was tied up in the black pine forest the other day—these fiery eyes and diamond pupils of old Monkey have long seen through her. All of you thought that she was such a fine person! It was she who devoured the monks, and it was she who abducted Master. You rescued a fine lady Bodhisattva indeed! Now that Master is taken, we have to search for him on the road we came from.”

  “Very good!
Very good!” said the two of them, sighing with admiration. “Truly there’s finesse in your roughness! Let’s go! Let’s go!” The three of them hurried back to the forest, and all they saw were

  Endless clouds,

  Boundless fog,

  Layered rocks,

  Winding path;

  Criss-crossing tracks of foxes and hare;

  Tigers, wolves, and leopards crowding there.

  Of the fiend in the woods there was no trace,

  Where Tripitaka was they knew not the place.

  Growing more anxious, Pilgrim whipped out his rod and, with one shake of his body, changed into that appearance that had greatly disturbed the Celestial Palace: with three heads and six arms wielding three rods, he delivered blows madly all over the forest.

  When he saw that, Eight Rules said, “Sha Monk, Elder Brother has gone berserk. Unable to locate Master, he’s having a fit of anger!” Pilgrim’s rampage, however, managed to turn up two old men; one was the mountain god, and the other the local spirit. “Great Sage,” they said as they went to their knees, “the mountain god and the local spirit have come to see you.”

  “What a miraculous stick!” exclaimed Eight Rules. “He waved it around and beat out both this mountain god and this local spirit. If he beat it around some more, he might even get himself Jupiter!”

  “Mountain god, local spirit,” said Pilgrim as he began his interrogation. “How ill-behaved you are! You have persisted in making bandits your allies in this place, and when they succeed, they undoubtedly sacrifice livestock in your honor. Now you even band together with a monster-spirit and join her in abducting my master. Where have you hidden him? Confess at once, and I’ll spare you a beating!”

  Horrified, the two deities said, “The Great Sage has wrongly blamed us. That monster-spirit is not in this mountain, nor is she subject to our dominion. But these minor deities do happen to know a little about the source of the wind last night.” “If you know,” said Pilgrim, “tell it all!”

  The local spirit said, “That monster-spirit has abducted your master to a place about one thousand miles due south of here. There is a mountain there by the name of Void-Entrapping, in which there is a cave called Bottomless. The mistress of the cave is the monster-spirit who took your master.”

  Startled by what he heard, Pilgrim dismissed the deities and retrieved his magic appearance. In his true form he said to Eight Rules and Sha Monk, “Master is very far away.” “If he’s very far,” said Eight Rules, “let’s soar on the clouds to get there.”

  Dear Idiot! He mounted a violent gust to rise first, followed by Sha Monk astride the clouds. Since the white horse was originally a dragon prince, he too trod on the wind and fog with the luggage on his back. Then the Great Sage also mounted his cloud somersault, and they all headed straight for the south. In a little while they saw a huge mountain blocking their path. Pulling back the horse, the three of them stopped their clouds to find that the mountain had

  A peak rubbing the blue sky,

  A top joining the green void.

  Divers trees by the thousands grew all around;

  Birds and fowl, cacophonous, flew here and there.

  Tigers, leopards walked in bands;

  Deer, antelope moved in herds.

  Where it faced the sun,

  Rare flowers and plants grew fragrant;

  On the shady parts

  The ice and snow stayed stubborn.

  The rugged summits;

  Steep precipices;

  A tall peak erect;

  A deep winding brook.

  Dark pine trees

  And scaly rocks—

  A sight that struck fear in a traveler’s heart!

  No shadow of one woodsman was ever seen,

  Nor a trace of an herb-gathering youth.

  Wild beasts before you could raise the fog

  As foxes all around called up the wind.

  Eight Rules said, “O Elder Brother! Such a rugged mountain must harbor fiends!” “That goes without saying!” replied Pilgrim. “For as the proverb puts it,

  A tall mountain will always have fiends.

  Could rugged peaks be without spirits?

  Sha Monk, you and I will remain here, and Eight Rules can go down to the mountain fold to see which is the better road to take. He should also find out whether there is in fact a cave, and whether its doors are open, and after he has made a thorough investigation, we can then go find Master and rescue him.”

  “Old Hog’s so unlucky!” said Eight Rules. “You always put me up to something first!”

  Pilgrim said, “You said last night that you would take care of everything. How could you go back on your word now?” “No need to start a quarrel!” said Eight Rules. “I’ll go.” Putting down his muckrake, Idiot shook loose his clothes and leaped down the mountain empty-handed. As he left, we do not know whether good or ill would befall him; let’s listen to the explanation in the next chapter.

  EIGHTY-TWO

  The fair girl seeks the yang;

  Primal spirit guards the Way.

  We were telling you about Eight Rules, who, having bounded down the mountain, discovered a narrow path, which he followed for some five or six miles. Suddenly he caught sight of two female fiends bailing water from a well. How did he know so readily, you ask, that they were female fiends? Because he saw that each of them had a chignon on her head about fifteen inches tall and adorned with tiny bamboo strips. It was a most unfashionable style! Our Idiot walked up to them and cried, “Monstrous fiends!”

  Infuriated by what they heard, the fiends said to each other, “This monk is such a rogue! We don’t know him, nor have we ever tittle-tattled with him. How can he address us as monstrous fiends just like that?” Greatly annoyed, the fiends picked up the poles they had brought along for carrying water and brought them down on Eight Rules’s head.

  Since Idiot had no weapons to ward off the blows, they succeeded in whacking him quite a few times. Holding his head, he ran back up the mountain, crying, “O Elder Brother, let’s go back! Those fiends are fierce!”

  “How fierce?” asked Pilgrim. Eight Rules replied, “In the mountain valley there were two female monster-spirits bailing water from a well. I called them once and they beat me several times with poles.”

  “What did you call them?” asked Pilgrim. “I called them monstrous fiends,” answered Eight Rules.

  “That,” said Pilgrim, chuckling, “was too small a beating!”

  “Thanks for looking after me!” said Eight Rules. “My head’s swollen, and you claim that it’s too small a beating!” Pilgrim said, “Haven’t you heard of the proverb?

  Gentility gets through the world;

  Obduracy takes you nowhere.

  They are monsters of this region, but we are monks who came from afar. Even if you possessed arms all over your body, you would still have to be more tactful. You walk up to them and immediately call them monstrous fiends! Would they overlook you and want to hit me instead? ‘A human person must put propriety and music first.’”

  “I’m even more ignorant of that!” said Eight Rules.

  Pilgrim said, “When you were devouring humans in the mountain during your youth, did you have any knowledge of two kinds of wood?” “No, what are they?” asked Eight Rules. “One is poplar, and the other’s rosewood,” said Pilgrim. “Poplar is quite pliant by nature, and it is used by craftsmen for carving holy images or making Tathāgatas. The wood is dressed in gold and painted; it is decorated with jade and other ornaments. Tens of thousands of people burn incense before it in their worship, and it enjoys countless blessings. Rosewood, on the other hand, is hardy and tough by nature. Oil factories, therefore, harvest it to make caskets: they bind the planks with iron rings, and then they hammer them with mallets. The wood’s toughness, you see, is what causes it to suffer like that.”

  “O Elder Brother!” said Eight Rules. “If you had told me a story like that a bit sooner, I would have been spared their beating.”r />
  “You must go back and question them further,” said Pilgrim. “But they’ll recognize me,” protested Eight Rules. “You may go in transformation,” Pilgrim answered. Eight Rules asked, “Even if I go in transformation, Elder Brother, how should I question them?”

  Pilgrim replied, “After you have transformed yourself, walk up to them and give them a proper greeting. See how old they are. If they’re about the same age as we are, address them as Ladies. If they are somewhat older, then call them Mesdames.”

  “What poppycock!” said Eight Rules, chuckling. “This place is so far from home. Why bother to be so intimate?” “It’s not a matter of intimacy,” said Pilgrim, “but of getting information from them. If they had indeed abducted Master, we could move against them immediately. If not, we certainly don’t want to be delayed from going elsewhere to finish our business, do we?” “You’re right,” said Eight Rules, “I’ll go back.”

  Dear Idiot! Stuffing the rake inside the sash around his waist, he walked down to the mountain valley, where with one shake of his body he changed into a dark, stoutish priest. He swaggered up to the fiends and bowed deeply, saying, “Mesdames, this humble cleric salutes you.”

  Delighted, the two of them said to each other, “Now this priest is quite nice! He knows how to bow, and he knows how to greet people properly.” “Elder,” asked one of them, “Where did you come from?”

  “Where did I come from,” said Eight Rules.

  “Where are you going to?” she asked again.

  “Where am I going to,” he replied again.

  “What is your name?” she asked a third time.

  “What is my name,” he replied a third time.

  Laughing, the fiend said, “This priest is nice all right, but he doesn’t seem to know anything, not even his own history, except to repeat what people say.”

  “Mesdames,” asked Eight Rules, “why are you bailing water?” The fiend said, “You may not know this, priest, but last night the mistress of our house abducted a Tang Monk into our cave whom she wanted to entertain. Since the water in our cave is not clean enough, she sent the two of us here to fetch fine water that is a product of yin-yang copulation.1 She is also having a vegetarian banquet prepared for the Tang Monk, for she wants to marry him this evening.”