The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 1

by Unknown

  150. FSZ 1, in SZZSHB, p. 12. See also Antecedents, pp. 18–21, and Hu Shi (1923), 358.

  151. On this important theme of banished gods as characters in Chinese fiction, see Li Fengmao , Liuchao Sui-Tang xiandaolei xiaoshuo yanjiu (Taipei, 1986); Li Fengmao, Wuru yu zhejiang (Taipei, 1996). Deities (human or nonhuman figures) incurring reincarnation through banishment or seduction by the human world (wuru) provide a frequent motif for late imperial fiction ranging from the Sanguozhi pinghua (fourteenth century), the Outlaws of the Marshes (sixteenth-century recension), the Shuoyue quanzhuan (eighteenth century), to, of course, The Story of the Stone (also eighteenth century). Just as XYJ makes this popular motif central to its narrative action, so, too, the text of the Stone exploits it for charting the tragic fate of the two teenage lovers. From the first chapter of this last Qing novel’s earliest manuscript (1754), the quatrain gātha ends the episode of the protagonist-stone’s origin and human incarnation with the familiar lines: “With no talents could one repair the azure sky? / Wrongly he entered the red-dust world for these few years , .” In sound and sense, the phrase “wrong entrance (wuru , or entrance by mistake),” potently resonates with “futile or wrongful entrance (wangru ),” for banished incarnation can result from either personal fault or judicial injustice.

  152. Arthur F. Wright, “Fu I and the Rejection of Buddhism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 12 (1951): 33–47.

  153. See the essays collected in the LWJ and Sa Mengwu , Xiyouji yu Zhongguo gudai zhengzhi (Taipei, 1969).

  154. See Chun-fang Yü, Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara (New York, 2001).

  155. A small, spoonlike instrument used as a dry measure for small amounts of powdered medicine, it is also frequently employed as a metonym for Sha Wujing in the narrative (e.g., chapter 22). Because the second graph in the term daogui may be anagrammatically separated into two identical individual graphs (i.e., tu ), another name often used by the novel’s narrator to designate Sha Monk is “Double Earth, ertu, .”

  156. See Wolfram Eberhard, “Beiträge zur kosmologischen Spekulation Chinas in der Han-Zeit,” Baessler Archiv 16 (1933): 1–100; SCC 2 (1970), pp. 253–65; Manfred Porkert, The Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine: Systems of Correspondence, MIT East Asian Science Series, 3 (Cambridge, MA, 1974), pp. 43–54. For one of the most detailed attempted accounts of how alchemical, Five phases, and Yijing (Classic of Change) terminologies, together with Buddhist numerology, are integrated to provide different forms of correlative schematization for the five pilgrims, see Nakano Miyoko , Saiyūki no himitsu (Tokyo, 1984), section II, pp. 71–170.

  157. At the height of a fierce battle ranging the powerful Bull Demon King (Niu mowang) against Wukong, Wuneng, and other deities coming to the pilgrims’ assistance in chapter 61, the Pig, echoing Monkey’s self-exegetical commentarial poem, adds these lines of another similar poem: “Wood’s born at hai, the hog’s its proper mate, / Who’ll lead back the Bull to return to earth. / Monkey’s the one who is born under the shen: / Harmless, docile, how harmonious it is!” The correlation of horary stems and symbolic animals should be self-evident.

  158. See DZ 1098, 24: 248–49. The term Yellow Dame is frequently glossed as meaning a person’s will or intention (i.e, yi ; so ET 2: 1158), but in the rhetoric of internal alchemy, the psychological acquires further the physiological meaning as the “secretion of the spleen. The secretion’s name is true earth . , .” This definition clarifies the multiple correlations with Sha Monk. It should be noted here as well that this form of relating the viscera to mental or psychological faculties did not originate with the Daoist religion. As early as The Classic of Difficult Issues , a medical text compiled in the first century CE, we encounter already such description: “The heart weighs twelve ounces. It has seven holes and three hairs. It is filled with three ko of essential sap. It masters the haboring of the spirit. The spleen weighs two catties and three ounces. Its flat width is three inches. Its length is five inches. It has a half catty of dispersed fat. It masters the containment of the blood and supplies the five depots with warmth. It masters the harboring of the sentiments. . . . The kidneys consist of two [separate] entities; they weigh one catty and one ounce. The master harboring of the mind , , , . , , , , , , . . . . , , .” See Nan-Ching: The Classic of Difficult Issues, trans. and annotated Paul U. Unschuld (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1986), pp. 416–17.

  159. See Liu Ts’un-yan, “Lin Chao-ên (15170–1598), the Master of the Three Teachings,” in Selected Papers from the Hall of Harmonious Wind (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976), pp. 149–74; Judith A. Berling, The Syncretic Religion of Lin Chao-en (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980); Chün-fang Yü, The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981); and Timothy Brook, “Rethinking Syncretism: The Unity of the Three Teachings and their Joint Worship in Late-Imperial China,” Journal of Chinese Religions 21 (Fall 1993): 14–44. In early imperial Chinese history from the late Han down to the Tang, the Three Religions (sanjiao) were often used interchangeably as the Three Daos or Three Ways (sandao). See Robert Ford Campany, “On the Very Idea of Religions (in the Modern West and in Early Medieval China),” HR 42/4 (May 2003): 287–319, and the important essays gathered in Sankyō kōshō ronsō , comp. Mugitani Kunio (Kyōto-shi, 2005). Comparative discussions of the Three Religions might have begun as early as the Late Han; see the “Lihuo lun ,” attributed to Mou Rong and collected in the Hongming ji , j1, 1a–22b, SBCK, if it were written indeed by the person recorded in the canonical Hou Hanshu , j 56. Scholarly opinion, however, thinks that the essay’s content is no earlier than the Six Dynasties; so CHC, 1 (1986): 854. The Hongming ji, nonetheless, contains many disputative essays by clerics and court officials on the merits and defects of two or three religions together. With the Yuan official Chen Yi and his major treatise, Sanjiao pingxin lun , we may discern a new polemical tactic in harmonizing or integrating through interpretation the diverse emphases and terminologies of the Three Religions. As he said in the preface, “The rise of the Three Religions has had a noble past. Operating in a parallel manner in the world, they transform and perfect the empire. When we examine them from their histories, they certainly were not all the same. When we analyze them from their principles, they could not be entirely different. One becomes three; three also becomes one. You cannot receive them while favoring one or the other , . , , , , , . , , .” The essay is collected in #2117, T 52, but I use another modern edition (Shanghai, 1935), bearing the Qing emperor Yongzheng’s 1734’s edict and affirming the value of the piece, because “the principles by which the Three Religions have enlightened the people of our domain have all emerged from the same origin , .” Chen’s writing might well have further funded the syncretistic tendencies in Quanzhen hermeneutics back in the Yuan, but there were also apparent differences in emphasis. The call to treat all Three Religions with the same respect because their doctrines could ultimately be seen as belonging to the same source had found an undeniable echo across the centuries from the 1592 XYJ text, for this message formed Sun Wukong’s very words when he counseled the ruler of the Cart Slow Kingdom after his domain was purged of three monsters masquerading as Daoist clergy in persecution of Buddhists (see the beginning of JW 2, chapter 47). On the other hand, as we have seen previously in note 158, this sloganized ideal did not prevent the Daoists or Buddhists or Confucians from claiming that their particular take of the Three Religions was the most authentic or useful one in forging homogeneity from religious plurality.

  160. The illustration is found in XMGZ, 9: 526, and in XMGZ-Taipei, p. 114. The illustration is taken from the clearer reproduction in SCC, V/5 (1983): 49.

  161. For the Buddhists’ rehearsal of their sufferings and persecutions in the hands of the Daoists that included beatings, forced migrations, hard labor as slaves, exposure, confinement, and pictured warrants for escapees that led to mass suicide, see XYJ, chapter 44, pp. 508–10.

  162. S
ee my “Religion and Literature in China: The ‘Obscure Way’ in The Journey to the West,” in CJ, pp. 169; see also Franciscus Verellen, “Luo Gongyuan, Légende et culte d’un saint taoïste,” JA 275 (1987): 283–332.

  163. Preserved in the Song Gaoseng zhuan (#2061, T 50: 712–14).

  164. How this phrase should be translated in different periods of Chinese medical and religious history requires brief discussion. The phrase is found in the writings by Ge Hong (283–343); see the Baopuzi , neipian 8, 2b SBBY. But much earlier than Ge, the phrase was already used in a line of a classical poem by the famed Cao Zhi (192–232) and titled “Feilong pian , The Dragon in Flight.” It is preserved in one version of a poem of a journey to Mount Tai that resulted in encounters with immortals. The narrator received divine drugs that would “restore my essence, augment my brain.” The translation here by Stephen Owen in The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry, Harvard East Asian Monographs 261 (Cambridge, 2006), p. 142, shows exemplary caution by separating the drug’s efficacy into two separate participial phrases without any necessary connection: that is, the drug would do X and it would do Y with the recipient’s body. Because the poet’s era was one in which the Scripture of Great Clarity (Taiqing jing ) and related texts were in circulation to promote external alchemy (waidan), Owen’s translation would comport with the understanding that our phrase might point to the physical or chemical “ingredients of the elixir [being] transmuted, or ‘reverted’ (huan) into their ‘essence’ (jing), which coagulates itself under the upper part of the crucible.” The jing in coagulation thus gathered from the physical instrument might then be construed as a drug possessive of restorative efficacy when ingested. See Fabrizio Pregadio, Great Clarity, p. 10. By the time of the novel’s formative period in the Ming or even earlier, however, the discourse of external alchemy had long been displaced by that of internal alchemy, wherein “the adept nourishes himself and his gods not through the ingestion of external substances, but through components of his own inner body; he finds the vital ingredients within himself, and their ingestion takes place internally” (Pregadio, p. 209). In the full-length novel, in other words, there is similarly a causal relation: the adept sends the essence up to the brain in order to nourish and replenish the body.

  165. For the meaning of River-Carts and illustrations, see SCC, V/5: 254–55. According to DJDCD, p. 405, the cart can refer to the “vehicle” or the cargo therein transported. For the specific references to the three named carts, see, for example, “Sanji zhiming quanti ,” DZ 275, the different texts gathered under the general title of “Xiuzhen shishu ,” DZ 263, and the “Chongyang Zhenren jinguan yusuo jue ,” DZ 1156. For discussion, see Franzeen Baldrian-Hussein, Proécédes secret du Joyau magique (Paris, 1984), pp. 171–83; Jennifer Oldstone-Moore, “Alchemy and Journey to the West: The Cart-slow Kingdom Episode,” JCR 26 (1998): 51–66; and Liu Ts’un-yan, “Quanzhen jiao he xiaoshuo Xiyouji,” HFTWJ 3: 1270–72. It should be noted that the ox cart of the Daoist treatises has been transformed into the Tiger Strength Immortal in the novel. Drawings of the carts are abundant in the Daoist canon, and for easily visible reproductions, see the picture titled “Les trois chariots” in Baldrian-Hussein, p. 173, and in SCC V/5: 177. Baldrian-Hussein’s enlarged reproduction is used here. It should also be noted that some Daoist texts seemed to distinguish between river carts and the three carts drawn by three beasts, the original source of the last type likely to have come from the Lotus Sūtra (see JW 4, chapter 100, note 19). See also the discussion in Louis Komjathy, Cultivating Perfection: Mysticism and Self-Transformation in Early Quanzhen Daoism (Leiden, 2007), pp. 208–11; p. 297, note 44.

  166. A diagram of these two pulse conduits may be found in SCC V/5: 256.

  167. See Wang Guoguang , “Xiyouji” bielun (Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe, 1990); Wang Gang , “Xiyouji—Yige wanzheng di Daojiao neidan xiulian guocheng —,” n.s., 25 (1995): 51–86.

  168. Chongyang zhenren jinguan yusuo jue, DZ 1156, 25: 800.

  169. See Dai Yuanchang , Xianxue cidian (Taipei, 1962), p. 35.

  170. Jinguan yusuo jue, DZ 25: 801; translation of xue follows SCC, V/6: 61.

  171. For more illustrations of the Double Pass or shuang guan , see Shangyangzi jindan tayao tu , DZ 1068, 2b, reproduced in SCC V/5: 105.

  172. DZ 1072, 6b–7a. My translation follows Needham’s suggestion in SCC V/5: 220; see 219–26 and 240–43 for his informative report on the use of figurative language in alchemical writings. This understanding of symbols based on illustrative analogy pervades all writings on inner alchemy. One commentator of the Tang treatise “Ruyao jing ” preserved in Daoshu , j 37, in DZ 20: 807–12, observes similarly: “Yellow Dame, Baby Boy, Fair Girl are not truly existent. It is a description by analogous symbolism, and they do not refer to any three things other than the body, the mind, and the intention , , , . , .” The comment is cited in He Qin , Longhu dandao—Daojiao neidanshu — (Chengdu, 1994), p. 175.

  173. The most comprehensive study I know of on the use of pi as part of religious rhetoric is Li Sher-shiueh [Shixue] , “Zhushu duo geyan: Lun Gao Yizhi Pixue ji qi yu Zhongxi xiucixue chuantong di guanxi :,” Renwen Zhongguo xuebao / Sino-Humanities 13 (2007): 55–116.

  174. Qianlong Jiaxuben Zhiyanzhai chongping Shitouji (Taipei: Hu Shi(h) jinianguan, 1961), j 1, 1.

  175. This irony is described thus by Professor Liu Ts’un-yan in HFTWJ 3: 1350–51: “Look at the name and thinking about its meaning, a story that describes Xuanzang’s story of scripture-seeking fundamentally should be one devoted to promote Buddhist doctrine and spirit.” However, he and many other contemporary scholars have pointed out how the rhetoric and diction of canonical and noncanonical Daoism have pervaded the novel’s text. For another view of the language of politics and irony in the novel, see Qiu Jiahui , “Houhua Xiyou/houhua Xiyou , in Song Geng , ed., Chongdu chuantong—kua wenhua yuedu xin shiye (Beijing, 2005), pp. 236–60.

  176. Yu, “Two Literary Examples of Religious Pilgrimage,” in CJ, p. 149.

  177. Xue when outside the body is blood, but within the body it is the relatively yin portion of the pneumatic vitalities, qi. See Nathan Sivin, Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor, 1987), pp. 156–61.

  178. For the text of the scroll, see Baojuan ed., Zhang Xishun , et al. (40 vols., Taiyuan, 1994), 14: 37–38. This scroll’s publication is dated to 1562 (Jiajing 41) or thirty years prior to the publication of XYJ, according to Zhang Jinchi, Xiyouji kaolun, p. 213. Andrew Plaks’s argument for a “sixteenth-century” milieu for the production of the full-length novel is impressively on target.

  179. See his Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, 2nd ed., rev. (Minneapolis, 1983), p. 35. Original French lines may be found in The Flowers of Evil & Paris Spleen: Poems by Charles Baudelaire, trans. William H. Crosby (Brookport, NY, 1991), p. 164.

  180. The Taoist Body, trans. Karen C. Duval (Berkeley, 1993), pp. 100–01.

  181. Baopuzi, neipian 18, 3a. SBBY.

  182. See Taoism and the Arts of China, ed. Stephen Little (Chicago, 2000), and its reproductions of the “Diagram of Reverted Illumination ” and “The Diagram of Comprehensive Illumination ,” p. 348.

  183. Cited by de Man, Blindness and Insight, p. 35. For the German original of Benjamin’s observation, see his Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, in Gesammelte Schriften (7 vols., Frankfurt am Main, 1972–89), 1: 406: “‘Min Weinen streuten wir den Samen in den Brachen / und gingen traurig aus.’ Leer also geht die Allegorie. Das schlechthin Böse, das als bleibende Tiefe sir hegte, existiert nur in ihr, ist einzig und allein Allegorie, bedeutet etwas anderes als es ist. Und zwar bedeutet es genau das Nichtsein dessen, was es vorstellt” (emphasis mine). I am grateful to Haun Saussy, University Professor of Comparative Literature, the University of Chicago, for tracking down the German passage for me. The English translation is found in Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London, 1977), p. 233: “‘Weeping we scattered the se
ed on the fallow ground / and sadly we went away.’ Allegory goes away empty-handed. Evil as such, which it cherished as enduring profundity, exists only in allegory, is nothing other than allegory, and means something different from what it is. It means precisely the nonexistence of what it presents” (emphasis mine).

  184. Monkey, pp. 7–8.

  185. Joyce Carol Oates, The Edge of Impossibility: Tragic Forms in Literature (New York, 1972), p. 5.

  CHAPTER ONE

  1. In Chinese legend, Pan Gu was said to be the first human, born from the union of the yin and yang forces. See the Wuyun linian ji and the Shuyi ji . He also assisted in the formation of the universe.