DD35 – Monkey
What defines a children’s classic book? One published more than fifty years ago and still regarded as ‘great’? Or from more than a hundred years ago? If we decide to focus on books written before 1900, there are several classics: A Christmas Carol (1843), Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Little Women (1868), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and Treasure Island (1883), just to mention a few. Most of these, and others from the 19th and early 20thCenturies are adventure stories, where we follow one or more youngsters as they get involved in hair-raising and sometimes hilarious events, often with adults helping or getting in the way. They were stories to which the young readers could relate, and even imagine themselves participating. Some might be about bears, rabbits or badgers, but those characters were almost human, too. My list betrays my background, of course, since I think of English-language books (including Grimms Fairy Tales and Struwwelpeter in translation).
My perspective on this was radically changed when I started travelling to Asia and first confronted Sun Wukong, a monkey with supernatural powers. Trying to write about Sun Wukong presents me with a number of issues. At the practical level, I used to have two versions of the Chinese classic Journey to the West. One was for children, thirty-four beautifully illustrated books telling in simplified fashion each of the adventures of Sun Wukong as he travels with the Tang Priest, Pig and Friar Sand on their journey from China to India (the Western Heaven) to collect the sacred Mahayana Scriptures. They were hilarious, with the adventures of Monkey (as Sun Wukong is titled in the series) and his friends involving increasingly improbable and often seemingly impossible challenges, only to be resolved by Money’s ingenuity and trickery, occasionally with help from the others. No wonder the Chinese television series (there are several) are so popular: Monkey is a cheeky, clever, naughty and magical character: he makes my children’s books heroes seem pallid and prosaic. Despite his ‘adventures’, even the Toad of Wind in the Willows can’t match up in any comparison, and Alice’s confrontations with the Red Queen and others in Wonderland are simple stuff compared to Monkey dealing with demons and dragons!
The other version I have is a dense book, small type covering almost 400 pages. It’s an abridged version of the original 3 volume complete text. Of course, that version is misleading, too. It isn’t the ‘complete text’: there’s no such thing. I not referring to the book in Chinese, which of course the original must be. No, the problem is rather more impossible to overcome. Journey to the West was, and probably still is, a living story, told, retold, embellished, and elaborated over some 1,400 years. For a long time it was an oral tradition, taking as its starting point the real journey undertaken by the Buddhist monk and translator Xuanzang who did travel to India in the early 600s. Born in 602, Xuanzang was a student of Buddhist studies at Jingtu monastery. After travelling throughout China in search of sacred books of Buddhism, he wanted to collect a set of original untranslated Sanskrit texts to help resolve debates over various competing translations of key ideas. He was 27 when he began his seventeen-year overland journey to India, eventually bringing many Sanskrit texts back on a caravan of twenty packhorses!
Xuanzang wrote an account of his journey, which was published in 646, as Great Tang Records on the Western Regions. However, Journey to the West is a novel, an account which retains the broad outline of Xuanzang’s travels, but adds elements from folk tales, Chinese folk religion and mythology, and various other sources. By the time it was written, the real journey had been elaborated and developed, and it was only in 1592 that a complete written version was prepared (it may have been offered in shorter versions some years before). Wu Cheng’en sets the saga in a broader framework, with Gautama Buddha (often just referred to as Buddha) giving the Tang Priest, Tang Sanzang, the task of obtaining copies of the Mahayana scriptures to and providing him with assistance (some assistance, as it turns out!). There’s Sun Wukong, (who I’ll call Monkey from now on), but he also gives the priest two other helpers – Strong-maned Pig, (Pig from now on), and Sha Wujing, (Friar Sand). Pig seems devoted to trying to thwart Monkey’s plans. One other key character is the Tang Priest’s white horse. Much later his horse will be revealed to be a dragon prince, eventually to be ordained as the ‘Great Strength Bodhisattva of the Eight Heavenly Sections’.
Confused? Don’t be. Sufficient to say that the adventures of Monkey, Pig, Friar Sand and the Tang Priest has been recounted and elaborated for several hundred years before Wu Cheng’en produced his written version. New versions and additions continue, with numerous television serials, manga and anime alternatives appearing in recent decades. All of them appear to retain much of the core story, a comic adventure, a pointed and yet humorous satire of Chinese mandarins and bureaucracy, underlain with spiritual insights and allegories
The structure of the story is interesting. Overall, the novel has 100 chapters that can be divided into four unequal parts. The first part, which includes chapters 1–7, is a self-contained introduction to the main story, dealing with Sun Wukong before he joins the Tang Priest. The second part (chapters 8–12) introduces us to the Tang Priest. The last part, Chapter 100, the final chapter, quickly describes the return journey to the Tang Empire, and the aftermath. These three parts top and tail the central 87 chapters, which are like a series of mini-stories: you can read any one of these independently, and although there is a time element linking them, and some scenes are precursors to or successors from an earlier chapter, they are largely independent blocks. These chapters are the core of most subsequent versions of the story, especially those adventures contained in children’s versions, or in the manga or anime alternatives mainly aimed at a young audience.
The first part of the story offers an evocative introduction to the style of the whole book. We read Monkey King was born from a strong magic stone on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit. He joins a group of other wild monkeys, and, following his accomplishing a successful ‘dare’, he takes the throne and calls himself Handsome Monkey King. However, he was upset when one of his older monkey friends dies and decides to find an immortal to teach him how to beat death. His subsequent adventures include learning such skills as the Way of Immortality from Taoist martial artist Puti Zushi, and, later, going to the land of the Dragon Kings. This is where Monkey acquires his golden-banded staff. This extraordinary item can change its size, elongate, fly, and attack opponents according to Monkey’s will. When he’s not using it, Monkey shrinks it down to the size of a sewing needle and stores it in his ear!
So much more takes place, but a critical stage is reached when the Jade Emperor Yu (the Heavenly Father) invites the Monkey King to visit him in Heaven. The irrepressible visitor causes havoc when he gets there. This culminates in one of the most memorable scenes in the book, when the Jade Emperor appeals to Buddha to deal with this badly behaved and boastful guest. The Buddha makes a bet that the Monkey King cannot escape from his palm. The Monkey King smugly accepts the bet. He leaps and flies all the way to the edge of the universe. Seeing nothing there but five towering pillars, the Monkey King believes that he has reached the end of all existence and marks his arrival on one pillar declaring himself the ‘Great Sage Equal to Heaven’ as well as urinating on another. He returns to Buddha’s palm to claim his victory by winning the bet, only to find that the five “pillars” he found are merely fingers of the Buddha’s hand! Buddha turns his hand into a mountain of rocks, and seals him under a mountain for five hundred years, marked with the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum.
Five hundred years later, Bodhisattva Guanyin is looking for a team to protect a pilgrim on a journey to the West to retrieve a collection of Buddhist sutras. Monkey offers to serve the pilgrim, the Tang Priest, but Guanyin realises Monkey will be difficult to control, and tricks him into putting a gold circlet on his head. Monkey discovers it cannot be removed, and when the Tang Priest uses a special sutra, the band tightens and cause an unbearable headache. The priest is almost ready to begin the journey.
In the second section of Journey to the West, we learn the character of the priest is can be seen as an allegorical representation of the human heart. Certainly, he proves helpless at defending himself and his first two escorts are killed during an encounter with demons soon after his departure from Chang’an. They are replaced by three powerful supernatural beings, and this is where Monkey, together with Pig and Friar join to aid and protect him on his travels. They become the Tang Priest’s disciples and once the pilgrimage is complete will receive enlightenment and redemption for their past sins. However, some aspects of their characters are not to be denied, and so Monkey will remain cheeky and naughty, and Pig will continue to look for ways to stop Monkey’s plans. These two characters will play key roles in the subsequent journey, during which the Tang Priest Tang is constantly terrorised by monsters and demons. Unlike the real monk, Xuanzang, the fictional Tang Priest appears a young rather naive monk, idealistically compassionate, often lacking mature wisdom, and frequently falling for the facades of demons who have disguised themselves as innocent humans. Monkey identifies them, but this often leads to tension between him and the priest.
Each section consists of 1–4 chapters, often involving the Tang Priest being captured and his life threatened, while his disciples try to find some ingenious (and often violent) ways of liberating him. At times the issues at stake are political, involving humans, but most of the time they comprise confrontations with various evil creatures, many of whom turn out to be earthly manifestations of heavenly beings. This is the core story, still used as the basis for all the contemporary and visual versions of Journey to the West. Is this enough of a summary to inspire you to go on to read a version of the book or watch a video version. I hope so, as there’s no way I can give a brief overview of all the complex – and exciting – adventures.
However, the style is well shown in adventure which takes place when the White Bone Demon tries to capture the priest. He attempts this three times, each time disguised as different family members. The first time he appears as a beautiful young woman. After Monkey ‘kills’ the woman, the demon escapes, and Monkey gets punished by the priest for his endeavours. Next the demon returns disguised as the young woman’s elderly mother, looking for her daughter. Monkey fails to kill the demon but scares him off. Then the demon returns a third time, now disguised as the young woman’s elderly father, searching for his wife and child. This time Monkey manages to kill the demon, but the Tang Priest, convinced that he had actually killed three innocent people, sends Monkey away, despite his protests, rather than being satisfied with chanting the words of the gold circlet to punish him!
Of course, the priest gets into more trouble, and Monkey returns to save him. The travellers continue to confront various magical monsters and evil magicians. There are impassibly wide rivers, flaming mountains, a kingdom with a (dangerous) all-female population, a lair of seductive spider spirits, and more. All this is wonderfully attractive for young readers, a suitable mixture of scary behaviour, ghouls and amazing rescues. It is easy to understand why Journey to the West is such a widely loved book: drama and adventure, overladen with mystical elements and all the creatures and gods of the Buddhist universe.
Much of Journey to the West relies on cultural knowledge and local history which an outsider misses. It is partly a Chinese story and it is partly a Buddhist story. Critics and researchers suggest that many of the events are explorations on the nature of fate as seen from a Buddhist perspective. Perhaps this is the reason the story is packed out with all those monsters, demons and other frightening creatures. However, despite what at times seem like overwhelming situations and attackers with extra-ordinarily malevolent abilities, the travellers always seem to emerge safe and largely undamaged by their battles.
In that sense, the story come across as a children’s tale: frightening, but ultimately safe. The same can be said of monkey, who is naughty, disrespectful and seemingly carefree, but at the end of every adventure he has done the right thing, saved the other travellers. Yes, he might boast a bit, but let’s be honest, he has good reason! One aspect of the story, which is opaque to an outsider, however, is the complex set of relationships between the various celestial beings, and the way in which Buddha is orchestrating much of what happens. Would a modern Chinese child understand all that? I doubt it. They are more likely to be similar to a Western child in the Anglo-Catholic world, where there is some vague knowledge of saints and disciples, but detailed knowledge is some kind of arcane pursuit, only for the specialist.
One aspect of the book which I missed until I read an introduction many years was that the number and nature of the disasters follows a plan. Often a monster turns out to be some kind of celestial being, sometimes being true to their nature, but sometimes needing to be helped out of a quandary. Towards the end of the book, Buddha plays a direct role by determining the form and the challenge of the last disaster. There’s a good reason for this. The Tang Priest is one short of the 81 tribulations required before attaining Buddhahood, and so it is Buddha’s responsibility to ensure this final task is created and solved.
By the time you arrive at Chapter 100, the final chapter of Journey to the West, you discover it comprises only a brief description of the return journey to the Tang Empire, and its aftermath. Each of the travellers is rewarded, given a position in the extremely bureaucratic Taoist heavens. Monkey and the Tang Priest both achieve Buddhahood as awakened and enlightened beings. Friar Sand becomes an arhat, having reached nirvana, and the priest’s White Dragon Horse is made a naga, a serpent-shaped deity. As for poor Pig, whose attempts to do good deeds were always limited by his greed, he is promoted to an altar cleanser, i.e. he is allowed to eat any excess offerings at altars!
The comparison between Journey to the West and my English classics is interesting. The books I read as a child often contained adventures in which children were naughty, often cheeky. However, their behaviour was always tempered by good (religious?) values, and almost to a fault they would end up as upright exemplars of proper and diligent behaviour. They certainly don’t depend on a comprehensive understanding of a context like that of the Taoist deities and their complex relationships that sit above Monkey’s adventures. There are moral learnings to be taken from Journey to the West, but the overwhelming theme is that Monkey is naturally naughty, enjoys making fun of others and has to be restrained (by that golden circlet on his head), rather than by some developing commitment to approved adult behaviour. No, on reflection, I’m wrong. Children’s classics in the East and the West are not that different. In both cases, they are often funny, sometimes scary morality tales, offering a glimpse of an exciting ‘other’ world, that might be, even could be, just around the corner.
