The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 4

by Unknown

  On hearing this, Eight Rules took out amiably his muckrake and laid it on the ground, while Sha Monk leaned his treasure staff against a wall. The second and third princes leaped up at once and tried to pick up the weapons. It was, however, as if dragonflies were pummeling pillars of rock! Though both princes struggled till their heads reddened and their faces turned scarlet, they could not budge the weapons one whit. When the eldest prince saw this, he called out: “Brothers, stop wasting your energy! You should know that the masters’ are all divine weapons, but I wonder how heavy they are.”

  With a chuckle, Eight Rules said, “My rake’s not too heavy! No more, in fact, than the weight of a single canon.7 Including the handle, it weighs five thousand and forty-eight pounds.”

  Turning to Sha Monk, the third prince asked, “Master, how heavy is your treasure staff?”

  “It’s also five thousand and forty-eight pounds,” replied Sha Monk. The eldest prince then asked Pilgrim to show him his golden-hooped rod. Pilgrim at once took out a tiny needle from his ear; one wave of it in the wind and it acquired the thickness of a rice bowl. As it stood there erect before their eyes, all the princes were frightened and all the officials grew apprehensive. Bowing, the three young princes said, “The weapons of Master Zhu and Master Sha are all carried on their persons and are taken out from beneath their clothes. Why is it that only Master Sun takes out his from his ear? Why does it grow the moment it’s exposed to the wind?”

  Smiling, Pilgrim said, “You don’t seem to realize that my rod isn’t just something you can pick up anywhere in this mortal world. This happens to be

  An iron rod forged at Creation’s dawn

  By Great Yu himself, the god-man of old.

  The depths of all oceans, rivers, and lakes

  Were fathomed and fixed by this very rod.

  Having bored through mountains and conquered floods,

  It stayed in East Ocean and ruled the seas,

  Where after long years it turned luminous,

  Able to grow or shrink or radiate.

  To call it my own was old Monkey’s fate,

  To make it change in any way I wish.

  I want it big, it’ll fill the universe;

  I want it small, it’ll be a tiny pin.

  Its name’s Compliant, its style, Golden-hooped—

  In Heaven and Earth something quite unique!

  Its weight, thirteen thousand and five hundred pounds,

  It can grow thick or thin, can wane or wax.

  It helped me to havoc the House of Heav’n;

  It followed me to crush the halls of Earth.

  It tames tigers and dragons every where;

  It smelts at all places demons and fiends.

  One jab upward will make the sun grow dim

  And daunt the gods and ghosts of Heav’n and Earth.

  A treasure handed down from Chaos’ time:

  No worldly iron is this rod sublime!”

  When those princes heard this declaration, every one of them bowed again and again and begged with all sincerity for instruction. “What sort of martial arts do you three want to learn?” asked Pilgrim.

  One of the princes said, “The one used to wielding a rod will study the rod. The one accustomed to using a rake will study the rake, and the one fond of using the staff will study the staff.”

  “It’s easy enough to give instruction,” said Pilgrim with a smile, “but none of you has any strength, and you can’t wield our weapons. I fear that you will not be able to attain mastery, and then the result will be something like, ‘A poorly drawn tiger that looks like a dog!’ As the ancients aptly put it,

  Instruction lacking sternness is the teacher’s sloth;

  Learning without accomplishment is the student’s fault.

  If the three of you are indeed sincere about the matter, you may burn some incense to worship Heaven and Earth. Let me then transmit some divine strength to you first, and only thereafter can we teach you the martial arts.”

  Filled with delight by these words, the three young princes went to find an incense table and carried it back themselves. Having purified their hands and lighted sticks of incense, they bowed deeply to Heaven. After the ceremony, they then asked for instruction from their masters. Turning around, Pilgrim saluted the Tang Monk in turn and said, “Let me inform the honored master and ask for his pardon. Since I was delivered by your great virtue that year in the Mountain of Two Frontiers, and since I embraced the faith of Buddhism, I have followed you in your westward journey. Though I have yet to repay all the kindness of my master, I have nonetheless served you with all my heart and all my strength. Now that we have arrived at a region in Buddha’s kingdom, we have the good fortune of meeting three worthy princes who have made submission to us and are desirous of learning the martial arts. If they become our disciples, they will be the grand-disciples of my master. I want to make this special report to you before I begin instruction.” Tripitaka was exceedingly pleased.

  When Eight Rules and Sha Monk saw Pilgrim saluting their master, they, too, went to their knees and kowtowed to Tripitaka, saying, “Master, we are foolish persons, slow of speech and dull-witted, and we don’t know how to speak. We simply beg you to take the lofty seat of dharma and allow also the two of us the pleasure of taking disciples. They’ll add to our remembrance of the journey to the West.” In delight Tripitaka gave his consent.

  In a secluded room behind the Gauze-Drying Pavilion, Pilgrim traced out on the ground a diagram of the Big Dipper. Then he asked the three princes to prostrate themselves inside the diagram and, with eyes closed, exercise the utmost concentration. Behind them he himself recited in silence the true sayings of realized immortality and intoned the words of Dhāraṇī as he blew divine breaths into their visceral cavities. Their primordial spirits were thus restored to their original abodes.8 Then he transmitted secret oral formulas to them so that each of the princes received the strength of a thousand arms. He next helped them to circulate and build up the fire-phases,9 as if they themselves were carrying out the technique for shedding the mortal embryo and changing the bones. Only when the circulation of the vital force had gone through all the circuits of their bodies (modeled on planetary movements) did the young princes regain consciousness. When they jumped to their feet and gave their own faces a wipe, they felt more energetic than ever. Each of them, in fact, had become so sturdy in his bones and so strong in his ligaments that the eldest prince could handle the golden-hooped rod, the second prince could wield the nine-pronged muckrake, and the third prince could lift the fiend-routing staff.

  When the old prince saw this, he could not have been more pleased, and another vegetarian banquet was laid out to thank the master and his three disciples. Right before the banquet tables, however, they began their instruction. The one studying the rod performed with the rod; the one studying the rake performed with the rake; and the one studying the staff performed with the staff. The princes thus succeeded in making a few turns and several movements, but they were, after all, mortals, and they found the goings rather strenuous. After exercising for a while, they began to pant heavily. Indeed, they could not last long, though their weapons might have the ability to undergo transformation. In their advances and retreats, their attacks and offenses, the princes simply could not attain the wonder of natural transformation. Later that day the banquet came to an end.

  The next day the three princes came again to thank their masters and to say: “We thank the divine master for endowing us with strength in our arms. Though we are now able to hold the weapons of our masters, however, we find it difficult to wield and turn them. We propose, therefore, that artisans be asked to duplicate the three weapons. They will use your weapons as models but take some of the weight off. Would the masters grant us permission?”

  “Fine! Fine! Fine!” said Eight Rules. “That’s a remarkable proposal! You really can’t use our weapons in the first place, and besides, we need them for the protection of the Law and the subjugation o
f demons. You should indeed make three other weapons.” The young princes immediately ordered the ironsmiths to purchase ten thousand pounds of raw iron. A tent was pitched in the front courtyard of the royal residence to serve as a temporary factory, and furnace and forge were set up. First, the iron was refined into steel in one day; the next day they asked Pilgrim and his two brothers to place the golden-hooped rod, the nine-pronged rake, and the fiend-routing staff in the tent so that the smiths could make copies of them. The weapons were thus left there day and night.

  Alas! These weapons originally were treasures meant to be carried by the pilgrims on their persons and inseparable from them for one moment. Even when concealed by the pilgrims’ bodies, they would exude great radiance to protect their owners. Now that they had been placed in the tent factory for several days, the myriad shafts of luminous mist and auspicious air emitted by these weapons flooded the sky and covered the earth. One night, a monster-spirit sat up in his abode, which happened to be some seventy miles away from the city, in a mountain called Leopard’s-Head and a cave named Tiger’s-Mouth. When he suddenly caught sight of the luminous mist and auspicious air, he mounted the clouds to investigate and found that the radiance was coming from the royal palace. Lowering his cloud to draw near, the monster-spirit discovered the three weapons and was moved to delight and desire. “Marvelous treasures! Marvelous treasures!” he exclaimed. “I wonder who uses them, and why they are placed here? Hmmmmm! This has to be my affinity! Let’s take them away! Let’s take them away!” As his affection grew, he at once summoned a powerful gust and swept away all three weapons and returned to his own cave. Thus it is that

  Dao can’t be left for a moment;

  What can be left is not the Dao.10

  When weapons divine are stolen,

  The seekers have labored in vain.

  In the end we don’t know how those weapons will be found; let’s listen to the explanation in the next chapter.

  EIGHTY-NINE

  The yellow lion-spirit in vain gives the Muckrake Feast;

  Gold, Wood, and Earth disturb with a scheme Mount Leopard’s-Head.

  We were telling you about those several ironsmiths, who had been hard at work for several days and therefore slept soundly at night. By morning, when they rose to resume their heating and hammering, they discovered that the three weapons in the tent had vanished. Dumbfounded and panic-stricken, they searched all over the place and ran into the three young princes, who were walking out from the palace to inspect the work. The ironsmiths all kowtowed and said, “O young lords! We do not know where the weapons of the divine masters have gone!”

  Shaken by the words, the young princes said, “Perhaps the masters themselves put the weapons away at night.” They dashed over to the Gauze-Drying Pavilion and saw that the white horse was still tethered at the corridor. Unable to contain themselves, they cried, “Masters, are you still sleeping?”

  “We’re up,” replied Sha Monk as he opened the door to let the princes in. When they looked around and did not see the weapons, one of them asked nervously, “Did the masters take back their weapons?”

  “No, we didn’t!” said Pilgrim, jumping up.

  “Those three weapons of yours,” said another prince, “all vanished during the night.”

  Scrambling up hurriedly, Eight Rules asked, “Is my rake there?” Another young prince said, “When we three came out just now, we saw people searching all over but they couldn’t find them. Your disciples suspect that the weapons may already have been taken back by the masters, and that’s why we’ve come to ask you. Since the treasures of our teachers can grow or shrink, I wonder if you haven’t concealed them on your bodies again, just to make fun of your disciples.”

  “Really, we have not taken them back,” said Pilgrim. “Let’s all go look for them.” They all went to the tent in the courtyard, but there was no trace of the weapons.

  “Those ironsmiths must have stolen them!” said Eight Rules. “Bring out the weapons quickly! A moment’s delay and you’ll be beaten to death! Beaten to death!”

  Horrified, the ironsmiths kowtowed and shed tears, saying, “Holy Fathers! We have been working so hard these last few days that we all slept through the night. By morning when we got up, the weapons were gone. We are all mortal men. How could we even have moved them? We beg you, Holy Father, to spare our lives! Please spare our lives!”

  Pilgrim said nothing in reply. Greatly annoyed, he muttered to himself, “This is our fault! Once they had copied the forms, we should have taken the weapons back. Why did we leave them here like that? Those treasures generate tremendous radiance and luminous colors. That must have disturbed some wicked person, who came and stole them during the night.”

  “What are you saying, Elder Brother?” asked Eight Rules, refusing to believe him. “It’s such a peaceful region here! This is no hollow mountain on the rustic countryside! How could there be any wicked people? It has to be the greed of those ironsmiths. When they saw the radiance of our weapons, they knew that these were treasures. They must have left the palace during the night and banded together with others. They must have dragged and hauled our weapons away. Let’s seize them now! Let’s beat them!” The ironsmiths could only kowtow and swear their denial.

  In the midst of all this commotion the old prince came out. When he learned what had taken place, his face, too, was drained of color. He brooded for a long time and then said, “The weapons of the divine masters are not like those of common mortals. Scores or even hundreds of men could not unlodge them or move them. Moreover, we have governed this city for almost five generations already. Not that we wish to brag or boast, but we do enjoy quite a virtuous reputation beyond these palace walls. The people of this city, be they civilians, soldiers, or artisans, do have respect for the laws of ours. They’d never dare be so unscrupulous. I beg the divine masters to reexamine the matter.”

  “There’s no need to reexamine anything!” replied Pilgrim, laughing. “Nor need we persist in putting the blame on the ironsmiths. Let me ask Your Highness, are there any mountain forests and monstrous fiends around this city of yours?”

  “This question of the divine master is most reasonable,” said the prince. “There is a Leopard’s-Head Mountain north of our city, and there is also a Tiger’s-Mouth Cave in it. People have frequently claimed that there are immortals in the cave, but some say also that tigers, wolves, and monstrous fiends live there. We have not been able to determine exactly what creatures there are.”

  “No need to say any more,” said Pilgrim, chuckling. “It must be some wicked creatures there who, having discovered our treasures, stole them during the night.” He then called out: “Eight Rules, Sha Monk, stay here to guard Master and protect the city. Let old Monkey go and look for our weapons.” He also instructed the ironsmiths not to put out the fire in the furnace so that they could continue to forge the princes’ weapons.

  Dear Monkey King! After taking leave of Tripitaka, he vanished completely from sight. Instantly he was standing on the Leopard’s-Head Mountain, for it was, you see, no more than thirty miles from the city. When he looked around on the peak, he saw that indeed there was a certain aura of monsters. Truly

  A lengthy dragon pulse,1

  A region vast and wide;

  Pointed peaks, erect, that puncture the sky;

  Sloping streams, dark and deep, that swiftly flow.

  Before the mount’s a carpet of jade grass;

  Behind the mount’s the brocade of rare blooms.

  Aged pines and cypresses;

  Ancient trees and bamboos.

  Crows and magpies in confusion fly and cry;

  Wild apes and cranes all screech and squall.

  Below the hanging ledge,

  Pairs and pairs of deer;

  Before the sheer cliff,

  Badgers and foxes in twos.

  The dragon approaching rises and falls;

  With nine turns and nine bends comes the earth pulse.

  Jade-Flow
er District is where the ranges meet,

  A place that prospers in ten thousand years.

  As Pilgrim stared at the scenery, he suddenly heard someone speaking from behind the mountain. Turning quickly to look, he found two wolf-headed fiends walking toward the northwest, chatting loudly.

  “These have to be fiendish creatures out patrolling the mountain,” mused Pilgrim. “Let old Monkey follow them and hear what they have to say.” Making the magic sign with his fingers, he recited a spell and, with one shake of his torso, changed into a little butterfly. With outstretched wings he soared and turned to catch up with them. In truth it was quite a model of transformation!

  Two wings gossamery,

  Twin feelers silvery.

  Aloft the wind he darts away

  Or dances slowly through the day.

  The waters and walls so nimbly he’ll skirt;

  With fragrant catkins his delight’s to flirt.

  Scents of fresh flowers his airy self most please;

  His graceful form unfolds with greatest ease.

  Wings aflutter, he alighted on the head of one of the monster-spirits to eavesdrop on them. All of a sudden, the monster said, “Second Elder Brother, our Great King has had several pieces of good luck. Last month he got himself a beautiful lady, who has been giving him a good time in the cave. Then last night he acquired these three weapons, and they’re truly priceless treasures. Tomorrow he plans to give a banquet at this so-called Muckrake Festival. All of us are going to enjoy ourselves.”

  “We’re quite lucky, too!” said the other one. “We have these twenty taels of silver to take to buy hogs and sheep. When we reach the Northwest Market, let’s have a few bottles of wine first. Let’s skim two or three taels off the top so that we can buy a cotton jacket for winter. Won’t that be nice?” The two fiends thus chatted and giggled as they sped along the main road.