Progress Report
It's this book I've been reading, Journey to the West, by Wu Cheng-En (circa 1500). To give context, there was a real-life Chinese monk who travelled to India, stayed there twenty years, and came back with a great stack of Buddhist texts. He was celebrated for a long time. Some folk tales arose about him, including some about his adventures with some helpful demon-types: Friar Sand, Friar Pig, and Friar Monkey.
Then Wu Cheng-En came along and developed the tales into a serial.
I'll skip the first seven chapters, which deal entirely with Monkey - how he was hatched from a stone egg on a mountain; called himself, variously, Little Stone Monkey, Handsome Monkey King, Monkey Who Understands Nothing (technically, 'Nothingness', or the Void, but it's funnier my way), and Great Sage Equalling Heaven; really pissed off Heaven; tried to piss off Buddha; and was trapped under a mountain for his naughtiness.
I'll also skip Chapter Eight, wherein Buddha asks the goddess Kuan-Yin to recruit a monk for a pilgramage to India, with permission to recruit three demon-helpers, and she does this and inhabits a temple in Chang-An (the capital) for a week while she finds just the right guy, and Chapter Nine, which is a blood-and-thunder with lust, murder, and babies sent down the river to grow up and achieve vengeance, and get on to Chapters Ten and Eleven.
See, a woodcutter and fisherman are walking home from work one evening having an informal poetry contest to pass the time (five pages), and then the fisherman mentions that he's always had wonderful catches since he started patronising this one fortune-teller, who is never wrong. A passing demon hears this, and tells the Dragon King of the local river, who gets very angry - doesn't want his home fished out, and decides to teach the fortune-teller a lesson or two. He manages to violate one of the dictates of Heaven while doing this, and ends up tied on the Dragon-Beheading Scaffold in Chang-An, where the Earthly Emperor Taizong is to arrange for his execution, which job goes to the Emperor's best minister Wei Zheng.
Well. The dragon, who is a bit scared, comes to the Emperor in a dream, and begs him to have mercy. The Emperor agrees to call Wei Zheng off. However, while Emperor Taizong and Wei Zheng are playing chess, Wei Zheng drifts off (at the time of the intended execution), dreams that he's at the Dragon-Beheading Scaffold, and does his job. Then he wakes up, but it wasn't only a dream because the staff come in with the dragon's head dripping ichor over the Emperor's parquet floor. Oh dear - the Emperor has become foresworn - against his will, but still.
The ghost of the dragon wants vengeance, and brings a case against the Emperor in Hell. The Emperor begins to get sick, so that he can die and his spirit can go to Hell and stand the trial. Before he pops off, however, Wei Zheng, who knows a thing or two, gives the Emperor a letter of introduction to an old friend of his who died and made something of himself in Hell, becoming a judge.
To cut a long story short, the case against the Emperor is dismissed. The judge is also extremely helpful, and secretly alters the Register of Births and Deaths (which records these things before they happen) to give Emperor Taizong twenty more years of life.
However. The Emperor wanted to give the guys in the underworld a thank you present, and they said, "We have gourds, eastern melons and western melons, or water-melons, here, but no pumpkins, no southern melons" (Wu, ca. 1500, p. 199) When he comes back to life, then, Taizong declares a great party, and releases some condemned prisoners and all sorts of nice things, and he also has to find someone to deliver the pumpkins. This means someone has to agree to die while carrying the relevant fruit.
A man called Liu Quan comes forward. He had accused his wife, wrongly, of being a loose woman and she had killed herself out of the shame. He regretted this deeply, and wanted to join her in Hell to make amends. So they put a couple of pumpkins on his head, and gold in his pocket, and Liu Quan drinks poison.
He finds himself in court, where they thank him very kindly for delivering the Emperor's present. Then they look up the names of Liu Quan and his wife in the Register of Births and Deaths, and exclaim that they are fated to become immortals. Well. They can bring Liu Quan back to life easily enough, but Miss Li's body is a bit manky by now. However, they know that the Emperor's kid sister is due to die soon, so they decide to borrow the body for her use.
And if you want to find out what happens next, read the next chapter.
Except I didn't, just then - I'd had so much fun with this one, that I wanted to savour it for a while. As I read it, my sides hurt from laughing.
Wu, C. E. (ca. 1500) Journey to the West. (W. J. F. Jenner, trans.) Beijing: Foreign Language Press.
Then Wu Cheng-En came along and developed the tales into a serial.
I'll skip the first seven chapters, which deal entirely with Monkey - how he was hatched from a stone egg on a mountain; called himself, variously, Little Stone Monkey, Handsome Monkey King, Monkey Who Understands Nothing (technically, 'Nothingness', or the Void, but it's funnier my way), and Great Sage Equalling Heaven; really pissed off Heaven; tried to piss off Buddha; and was trapped under a mountain for his naughtiness.
I'll also skip Chapter Eight, wherein Buddha asks the goddess Kuan-Yin to recruit a monk for a pilgramage to India, with permission to recruit three demon-helpers, and she does this and inhabits a temple in Chang-An (the capital) for a week while she finds just the right guy, and Chapter Nine, which is a blood-and-thunder with lust, murder, and babies sent down the river to grow up and achieve vengeance, and get on to Chapters Ten and Eleven.
See, a woodcutter and fisherman are walking home from work one evening having an informal poetry contest to pass the time (five pages), and then the fisherman mentions that he's always had wonderful catches since he started patronising this one fortune-teller, who is never wrong. A passing demon hears this, and tells the Dragon King of the local river, who gets very angry - doesn't want his home fished out, and decides to teach the fortune-teller a lesson or two. He manages to violate one of the dictates of Heaven while doing this, and ends up tied on the Dragon-Beheading Scaffold in Chang-An, where the Earthly Emperor Taizong is to arrange for his execution, which job goes to the Emperor's best minister Wei Zheng.
Well. The dragon, who is a bit scared, comes to the Emperor in a dream, and begs him to have mercy. The Emperor agrees to call Wei Zheng off. However, while Emperor Taizong and Wei Zheng are playing chess, Wei Zheng drifts off (at the time of the intended execution), dreams that he's at the Dragon-Beheading Scaffold, and does his job. Then he wakes up, but it wasn't only a dream because the staff come in with the dragon's head dripping ichor over the Emperor's parquet floor. Oh dear - the Emperor has become foresworn - against his will, but still.
The ghost of the dragon wants vengeance, and brings a case against the Emperor in Hell. The Emperor begins to get sick, so that he can die and his spirit can go to Hell and stand the trial. Before he pops off, however, Wei Zheng, who knows a thing or two, gives the Emperor a letter of introduction to an old friend of his who died and made something of himself in Hell, becoming a judge.
To cut a long story short, the case against the Emperor is dismissed. The judge is also extremely helpful, and secretly alters the Register of Births and Deaths (which records these things before they happen) to give Emperor Taizong twenty more years of life.
However. The Emperor wanted to give the guys in the underworld a thank you present, and they said, "We have gourds, eastern melons and western melons, or water-melons, here, but no pumpkins, no southern melons" (Wu, ca. 1500, p. 199) When he comes back to life, then, Taizong declares a great party, and releases some condemned prisoners and all sorts of nice things, and he also has to find someone to deliver the pumpkins. This means someone has to agree to die while carrying the relevant fruit.
A man called Liu Quan comes forward. He had accused his wife, wrongly, of being a loose woman and she had killed herself out of the shame. He regretted this deeply, and wanted to join her in Hell to make amends. So they put a couple of pumpkins on his head, and gold in his pocket, and Liu Quan drinks poison.
He finds himself in court, where they thank him very kindly for delivering the Emperor's present. Then they look up the names of Liu Quan and his wife in the Register of Births and Deaths, and exclaim that they are fated to become immortals. Well. They can bring Liu Quan back to life easily enough, but Miss Li's body is a bit manky by now. However, they know that the Emperor's kid sister is due to die soon, so they decide to borrow the body for her use.
And if you want to find out what happens next, read the next chapter.
Except I didn't, just then - I'd had so much fun with this one, that I wanted to savour it for a while. As I read it, my sides hurt from laughing.
Wu, C. E. (ca. 1500) Journey to the West. (W. J. F. Jenner, trans.) Beijing: Foreign Language Press.
posted by theamazingcatherine | 10:54 pm
3 Comments:
I've got the translation of this by Arthur Waley, and have read it a couple of times. 'tis very good :-)
That's rather a complicated plotline you've got there.
How is the poem about the first 7 chapters going?
Steph
Working on it.
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