The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 1

by Unknown

  The Great Immortal next gave the order that a huge frying pan be brought out. “Eight Rules, we are lucky!” said Pilgrim, laughing. “If they are hauling out a pan, they must want to cook some rice for us to eat.” “That’s all right with me,” said Eight Rules. “If they let us eat some rice, we’ll be well-fed ghosts even if we die!” The various immortals duly brought out a huge pan, which they set up before the steps of the main hall. After giving the order that a big fire be built with plenty of dry firewood, the Great Immortal said, “Fill the pan with clear oil. When it boils, dump Pilgrim Sun into the pan and fry him! That’ll be his payment for my ginseng tree!”

  When Pilgrim heard this, he was secretly pleased, saying to himself, “This is exactly what I want! I haven’t had a bath for some time and my skin is so dry that it’s getting itchy. For good or ill, I’ll enjoy a little scorching and be most grateful for it.” In a moment, the oil was about to boil. The Great Sage, however, was quite cautious; fearing that this might be some form of formidable divine magic that would be difficult for him to handle once he was in the pan, he looked around quickly. In the east he saw a little terrace with a sundial on top, but to the west he discovered a stone lion. With a bound, Pilgrim rolled himself toward the west; biting the tip of his tongue, he spat a mouthful of blood on the stone lion, crying, “Change!” It changed into a figure just like himself, all tied up in a bundle. His true spirit rose into the clouds, from where he lowered his head to stare at the Daoists.

  Just then, one of the little immortals gave this report, “Master, the oil is sizzling in the pan.” “Pick up Pilgrim Sun and throw him in!” said the Great Immortal. Four of the divine lads went to carry him, but they could not lift him up; eight more joined them, but they had no success either. They added four more, and still they could not even budge him. “This monkey loves the earth so much that he can’t be moved!” said one of the immortals. “Though he may be rather small, he’s quite tough!” Finally, twenty little immortals managed to lift him up and hurl him into the pan; there was a loud splash, big drops of boiling oil flew out in every direction, and the faces of those little Daoists were covered with blisters. Then they heard the lad who was tending the fire crying, “The pan’s leaking! The pan’s leaking!” Hardly had he uttered these words when all the oil was gone. What they saw in the pan with its bottom punctured was a stone lion.

  Enraged, the Great Immortal said, “That wretched ape! He’s wicked indeed! And I’ve allowed him to show off right in front of my nose! So, he wanted to escape, but why did he have to ruin my pan? I suppose it’s exceedingly difficult to catch the wretched ape, and even if one does catch him, trying to hold him is like trying to grasp sand or handle mercury, to catch a shadow or seize the wind! All right! All right! Let him go. Untie Tripitaka Tang and bring out a new pan. We’ll fry him instead in order to avenge my ginseng tree.” The various little immortals accordingly went to untie the lacquer cloth, but Pilgrim, who heard this clearly in the air, thought to himself, “Master is utterly helpless! If he arrives in the pan, the first boiling bubble will kill him and the second will burn him up; by the time the oil sizzles three or four times, he’ll be a messy monk! I had better go and save him!” Dear Great Sage! He lowered the direction of his cloud and went back to the main hall. With his hands at his waist, he said, “Don’t untie the lacquer wrapping to fry my master. Let me go into the pan of boiling oil instead.”

  “You wretched ape!” cried a somewhat startled Great Immortal. “How dare you display such tricks to wreck my stove?”5 “If you have the misfortune of meeting me,” said Pilgrim, laughing, “your stove deserves to be overturned! Why blame me? Just now, I was about to receive your kind hospitality in the form of oily soup, but I suddenly had the urge to relieve myself. If I opened up right in the pan, I was afraid that I might spoil your hot oil so that it could not be used for cooking. Now that I’m completely relieved, I feel quite good about going into the pan. Don’t fry my master; fry me instead.” When the Great Immortal heard these words, he laughed menacingly and ran out of the hall to catch hold of Pilgrim. We do not know what sort of things he has to say to him, or whether Pilgrim manages to escape again. Let’s listen to the explanation in the next chapter.

  Notes

  PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION

  1. Inspired by David Hawkes and John Minford in The Story of the Stone, and by Andre Lévy in Wu cheng’en La Pérégrination vers l’Ouest, I have emulated some of their examples of name translation.

  PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

  1. A. Rogačev and V. Kolokolov, trans., Wu Ch’êng-êen: Putešestvije na zapad, 4 vols. (Moscow, 1959). See Z. Novotná’s note in Revue bibliographique de sinologie 5 (1959): 304, for a brief descriptive review. I have not been able to obtain a copy of this edition for examination.

  2. Si yeou ki, ou le voyage en occident, trans. Louis Avenol (Paris, 1957).

  3. The Monkey King, ed. Zdena Novotná and trans. George Theiner (London, 1964).

  4. (London, 1943). This book is currently available in a paper edition by Grove Press.

  INTRODUCTION

  1. See Liang Qichao , “Zhongguo Yindu zhi jiaotong ,” in Foxue yanjiu shiba pian (1936; reprint Taipei, 1966); Ven Dongchu , Zhong-Yin Fojiao jiaotong shi (Taipei, 1968), pp. 166–222.

  2. See “Tang shangdu Zhangjing si Wukong zhuan ,” in Song Gaoseng zhuan , j 3 (#722, T 50: 2061); Sylvan Lévi and Édouard Chavannes, “L’itinéraire d’Ou-k’ong,” JA, 9th ser. 6 (1895): 341–85.

  3. The dates of the monk’s birth, departure for India, and death have been topics of endless controversy in modern Chinese scholarship. Just the date of birth alone has been placed in 596, 600, or 602. For the earliest date, I follow the conclusion reached by Liang Qichao, “Zhina neixueyuan jingjiaoben Xuanzang shuhou ,” in Foxue yanjiu; Luo Xianglin , “Jiu Tangshu Xuanzang zhuan jiangshu ,” in Jinian Xuanzang dashi linggu guiguo feng’an zhuanji (Taipei, 1957), pp. 66–67. Their views are followed more recently by Master Yinshun and by Ōta, 1993, p. 7. The studies by Liang, Luo, and Yinshun have been collected in two volumes of modern essays devoted to the pilgrim. See Xuanzang dashi yanjiu , in Xiandai foxue congkan , ed., Zhang Mantao (Taipei, 1977), vols. 8 and 16. More debates on these dates are included in volume 16. The problem with the early date is that it contradicts Xuanzang’s own statement in his memorial to Emperor Taizong during the final stage of his return journey: “In the fourth month of the third year of the Zhenguan reign period [i.e., 630], braving the transgression of the articles of law, I departed for India on my own authority.” The memorial, most likely genuine, is preserved in book 5, the first half of his biography compiled by his disciples Huili and Yanzong , generally regarded as the work’s most reliable section. The biography known as Da Tang Da Ci’ensi Sanzang Fashi zhuan , found in #2052, T 50, has a modern critical edition gathered with a huge collection of the most important historical documents concerning the pilgrim’s life and work and conveniently printed in a massive single volume: see SZZSHB. The discrepancy between the traditional date and the reconstructed one is usually explained on the basis of calligraphic similarity between the graph for original/first (yuan ), as in the “first year of the Zhenguan period,” and the graph for three/third (san ), thereby inducing mistranscription or misreading.

  4. See the FSZ, j 1 in SZZSHB. Some English accounts of Xuanzang’s life and exploits include Arthur Waley, The Real Tripitaka and Other Pieces (London, 1952), pp. 11–130; René Grousset, In the Footsteps of the Buddha, trans. J.A. Underwood (New York, 1971); Richard Bernstein, Ultimate Journey: Retracing the Path of an Ancient Buddhist Monk Who Crossed Asia in Search of Enlightenment (New York, 2001); Ch’en Mei-Chin, The Eminent Chinese Monk Hsuan-Tsang: His Contribution to Buddhist Scripture Translation and to the Propagation of Buddhism in China (Ann Arbor, 2002); and Sally Hovey Wriggins, The Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang (Boulder, CO, 2004).

  5. Arthur F. Wright, “The Formation of Sui Ideology, 581–604,” in Chinese Thought and Institutions, ed.
John K. Fairbank (Chicago, 1957), p. 71.

  6. See Huang Shengfu , Tangdai Fojiao dui zhengzhi zhi yingxiang (Hong Kong, 1959); Arthur F. Wright, “Tang T’tai-tsung and Buddhism,” and Stanley Weinstein, “Imperial Patronage in the Formation of T’ang Buddhism,” in Perspectives on the T’ang, eds. Arthur F. Wright and Denis Twitchett (New Haven, 1973), pp. 239–64 and pp. 265–306; and Stanley Weinstein, Buddhism Under the T’ang (Cambridge, 1987), esp. part one.

  7. Kenneth Ch’en, Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton, 1964), pp. 117–18. For a discussion of the various interpretations of this sūtra prior to the time of Xuanzang, see Tang Yongtong , Han Wei Liang-Jin Nanbei Chao Fojiao shi , 2 vols. (Shanghai, 1937), 1: 284–87, 2: 134–39, 189–218.

  8. For the text and Xuanzang’s translation of the commentary by Vasubandhu, see T 31: 97–450, #s 1592, 1593, 1595, 1596, 1597, and 1598. For a modern commentary on this śāstra, see Yinshun, She dacheng lun jiangji (1946; reprint Taipei, 1972).

  9. FSZ, j 3. See also Ren Jiyu , Han-Tang Fojiao sixiang lunji (Beijing, 1963), pp. 61–62.

  10. This was the famous Incident of the Xuanwu Gate . See CHC 3/1 (1979): 182–87, 190–93.

  11. For the accounts of Xuanzang’s perilous departure from Tang territory through several of the fortified passes, see my essay, “The Real Tripitaka Revisited: International Religion and National Politics,” in CJ, pp. 188–203. Most scholars follow the biography and set the date of Xuanzang’s departure in 629. I have, however, found Liang Qichao’s argument for the earlier date to be more persuasive, and his conclusion is further supported by Luo Xianglin’s additional research. See Luo (note 3), pp. 66–67.

  12. The apology was tendered first in the form of a written memorial and then allegedly repeated orally to the emperor during the monk’s audience with his ruler. See the accounts in FSZ, j 5 and 6 in SZZSHB, p. 126 and p. 132.

  13. For the textual account by the Jiu Tangshu, j 191, see SZZSHB, pp. 837–38.

  14. See Isobe, pp. 53–65, and further important analysis and summary in Cao Bingjian , “Xin faxian de Xiyouji ziliao jiqi jiedu ,” Nanjing Shida Xuebao 1 (January 2009): 132–37. Earlier twentieth-century recoveries of much-studied material artifacts associated with Xuanzang’s pilgrimage (see XYJYJZL, unnumbered pages fronting volume) would include six Dunhuang wall murals generally dating to the Xixia period of 1038–1227 (a Tibetan-speaking state composed of Tangut tribes in modern Gansu and Shaanxi provinces, it began as a tributary state of the Song and later claimed independent sovereignty); a depiction of the human pilgrim and his novelistic disciples on a sculptured relief (fudiao ) at a cave’s entrance on Hangzhou’s famous Feilai Mountain (dating controversial, as some scholars had argued that the relief could have been influenced by the 1592 novel); a likely Yuan porcelain pillow with etchings of human pilgrim and disciples now collected in Guangdong Museum; and possibly another wall mural in the Blue Dragon Monastery located at Mount Ji in the modern province of Shanxi . The most spectacular recent find seems to be the discovery in Japan of a large collection of thirty-two paintings of the pilgrimage, first introduced to the world and studied by Tanaka Isse and Toda Teisuke in 1992. The paintings were published in facsimile duplications in 2001 as a two-volume album titled Tōsō Shukyō Zusatsu (Painting Album on the Tang Monk Acquiring Scriptures) by Nigensha of Kabushiki Kaisha (not seen by the present translator). Several Japanese scholars have contributed essays to the album, including the XYJ specialist Isobe Akira and the Chinese art historian Iwakura Masaaki . Although Tanaka and Toda in their essays thought that the paintings originally could have been the work of the Yuan painter Wang Zhenpeng (1280?–1329?), they also argued that the scenes depicted reflected direct linkage to episodes in the 1592 novel. Their studies have been discussed, in turn, by Isobe Akira in two essays of his own, disputing the current form of the album as a confused collation of different segments of a story divergent from the novelistic narrative and suggesting that there could have been more than one painter. See “‘Tōsō Shukyō Zusatsu’ ni ukagau Saiyūki monogatari—Daitō shukkai kara Saitenjiku nyukoku e—,” Toyama Daigaku Jinbun Gakubu Kiyō 24 (1996): 338–25 [Arabic numbers in reverse; in Japanese numbering, pp. 1–14]; and “‘Tōsō Shukyō Zusatsu’ ni ken miru Saiyūki monogatari—Daitōkoku shukkyo madeo chūshin ni———,” Tōhōgaku Ronshū, Eastern Studies Fiftieth Anniversary Volume (The Tōhō Gakkai, 1997), pp. 169–86. On pp. 325–26 of the 1996 essay, two photographs of porcelain vases featuring some of the paintings were reproduced, but these vases were identified as those made in the Jiajing era (1522–1566) of the Ming. As far as I know, the album has caught the attention of only two Chinese scholars and they, in turn, have provided a summary report supported by some astute analysis and a minor corrective reading of an “old style” poetic inscription on one of the paintings. See Cao Bingjian and Huang Lin , “Tang Seng qujing tuce tankao ” Shanghai Shifan Daxie Xuebao 37/6 (November 2008): 72–82. The paintings as a whole seem to indicate a great many story fragments and episodes unknown to the extant full-length or abridged versions of the novel named Xiyouji.

  15. See Antecedents in the abbreviations for full citation.

  16. This Buddhist text, though one of the shortest, has long been venerated as one of the religion’s most succinct articulations of emptiness in relation to Buddha’s understanding of perfect wisdom. It is also a text that had elicited more commentaries in Asia than any other sūtra. For a study of its philosophical treatments and ritual uses in India, Tibet, and the West, see Donald S. Lopez Jr., Elaborations on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sūtra (Princeton, 1996).

  17. Ouyang Wenzhong ji , j 125, 4b (SBBY): “.”

  18. The qujingji was examined in 1916 by Luo Zhenyu , who published a photographic facsimile of it in his Jishi’an congshu with his own postface . The poetic tale or shihua was examined by both Wang Guowei and Luo in 1911, who also published it in 1916 with postfaces by himself (dated 1916) and by Wang (dated 1915). Modern editions of the shihua include the 1925 edition by the Commercial Press of Shanghai, and a 1954 edition by the Zhongguo gudian wenxue chubanshe of Shanghai. All future references in this translation are to the 1954 edition. More recent modern reprints of the shihua text can be found conveniently in XYJZLHB, pp. 39–58, and in XYJYJZL, pp. 154–73. For a recent translated version of the poetic tale, see CATCL, pp. 1181–207.

  19. Hu Shiying , Huaben xiaoshuo gailun (2 vols., Beijing, 1980), 1: 199.

  20. On the importance of the Deep Sand God (shensha shen ), see Hu Shi (1923), pp. 364–65; for the possible earlier sources of this deity, see Antecedents, pp. 18–21.

  21. In the dramatic version of the story, Guizimu became the mother of Red Boy , and both of them were subdued by Guanyin. Dudbridge, in Antecedents, p. 18, note 2, points out that the name Guizimu appears only incidentally in the hundred-chapter novel, but it is nonetheless significant that its appearance occurs in the very episode of the Red Boy. See XYJ, chapter 42, p. 485.

  22. See Houcun xiansheng daquan ji , j 43, 18b. The additional reference to a monkey acolyte in j 24, 2a, only mentions an ugly face of such a figure without any overt relation to the theme of the quest for scriptures. See Antecedents, pp. 45–47, for a discussion of these two poetic passages.

  23. G. Ecke and P. Demiéville, The Twin Pagodas of Zayton, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 11 (Cambridge, MA, 1935), p. 35.

  24. Ōta and Torii in the “Kaisetsu ” of the translated Saiyūki, 1: 432, have challenged Ecke and Demiéville’s interpretation of the carving by pointing out that the figure at the upper right-hand corner should be thought of simply as a figure of Buddha and not of Xuanzang, which Monkey will become on success of bringing the scriptures. It may be added that Sun Wukong of the novel did use a sword or scimitar (cf. JW, chapters 2 and 3) prior to acquiring his famous rod. None of the scholars consulted here sees fit to discuss the significance of what seems to be a headband worn by the carved figure.

  25. The story, which appears in the third volume o
f the fragment from the Qingping shantang huaben , also exists in slightly revised form in the anthology Gujin xiaoshuo , j 20. For the possible date of this story, see Patrick Hanan, The Chinese Short Story (Cambridge, MA, 1973), pp. 116, 137–38.

  26. So dated by Dudbridge in Antecedents, p. 133.

  27. Ibid., p. 128.

  28. Dudbridge’s arguments (pp. 126–27) against any connection between the white ape legend and Sun Wukong of the full-length XYJ do not seem to me to be entirely convincing. Already conceding that the Sun Xingzhe of the twenty-four-act drama is explicitly represented as an abductor of women, Dudbridge insists that this may not be part of the “authentic” tradition because of (1) “the liberties taken with the materials to the cause of dramatic expediency,” and (2) the Kōzanji version, “earliest and, in its own way, most genuine of the sources, [which] shows no trace of any such characterization in its monkey-hero.” To these arguments, it may be pointed out (1) that there is no reason why the Kōzanji version, just because it is the earliest text, should contain every significant element of a developing tradition; (2) that the name Great Sage (Dasheng, though without the qualifying Qitian or Equal-to-Heaven), already found in the Song poetic tale (section 17), has been used frequently in popular fiction and drama such as those canvassed by Dudbridge to name a variety of animal demons or spirits; and (3) that the Sun Wukong of the novel, though less ribald in speech and manner than his dramatic counterpart, is no stranger to sexual play when it is called for (cf. XYJ, chapter 60, p. 694; chapter 81, pp. 927–28). For a more recent essay on pictorial accounts as ancient as the latter Han depicting the female abduction by an ape and the battles of animal warriors, see Wu Hung, “The Earliest Pictorial Representations of Ape Tales: An Inter-disciplinary Study of Early Chinese Narrative Art,” TP 73, 1–3 (1987): 86–112.