Journey to the West () is a Chinese novel published in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty and attributed to Wu Cheng'en. It is regarded as one of the great Chinese novels, and has been described as arguably the most popular literary work in East Asia. It was widely known in English-speaking countries through the British scholar Arthur Waley's 1942 abridged translation Monkey.
The novel is a fictionalized and fantastic account of the pilgrimage of the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who went on a 19-year journey to India in the 7th century AD to seek out and collect Buddhist scriptures (sūtras). The novel retains the broad outline of Xuanzang's own account, Records of the Western Regions, but embellishes it with fantasy elements from folk tales and the author's invention. The beginning part of the story deals with the earlier exploits of Sun Wukong, a monkey born on Flower Fruit Mountain from a stone egg that forms from an ancient rock created by the coupling of Heaven and Earth, who learns the art of the Tao, 72 polymorphic transformations, combat, and secrets of immortality, and whose guile and force earns him the name Qitian Dasheng (). Wukong was tasked by Bodhisattva Guanyin and the Buddha to become Tang Sanzang's first disciple, journeying with him to India and provides him with three other disciples who agree to help him in order to atone for their sins: Zhu Bajie, Sha Wujing and White Dragon Horse. Riding the latter, Sanzang and his disciples journey to a mythical version of India and find enlightenment through the power and virtue of cooperation.
Journey to the West has strong roots in Chinese folk religion, Chinese mythology, Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoist and Buddhist folklore. The pantheon of Taoist immortals and Buddhist bodhisattvas are still reflective of certain Chinese religious attitudes today, while being the inspiration of many modern manhwa, manhua, manga and anime series. It contains many religious references and spiritual concepts which often involve plays on Chinese names of characters and places, which are often lost in translation to other languages. It is a progenitor to the xianxia literary genre that combines martial arts with high fantasy. Enduringly popular, the novel is simultaneously a comic adventure, a satire of Chinese bureaucracy, a source of spiritual reflection, and a rich allegory.
History Creation and authorship
The modern 100-chapter form of Journey to the West dates from the 16th century. Embellished stories based on Xuanzang's journey to India had circulated in China through oral storytelling for centuries. They appeared in book form as early as the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279). The Yongle Encyclopedia, completed in 1408, contains excerpts of a version of the story written in colloquial Chinese. The earliest surviving edition of Journey to the West was published in 1592 in Nanjing. Two earlier editions were published between 1522 and 1566, but no copies of them survive.
The authorship of Journey to the West is traditionally ascribed to Wu Cheng'en, but the question is complicated by the fact that much of the novel's material originated from folk tales. Anthony C. Yu, writing in 2012, warned that "this vexing dispute over the novel's authorship, similar to that on the priority of its textual versions, see-sawed back and forth for nearly a century without resolution." Hu Shih, literary scholar, former Chancellor of Peking University, and then Ambassador to the United States, wrote in 1942 that the novel was thought to have been written and published anonymously by Wu Cheng'en. He reasoned that the people of Wu's hometown attributed it to him early on, and kept records to that effect as early as 1625; thus, claimed Hu, Journey to the West was one of the earliest Chinese novels for which the authorship is officially documented.
More recent scholarship casts doubts on this attribution. Brown University Chinese literature scholar David Lattimore stated in 1983: "The Ambassador's confidence was quite unjustified. What the gazetteer says is that Wu wrote something called The Journey to the West. It mentions nothing about a novel. The work in question could have been any version of our story, or something else entirely." Translator W. J. F. Jenner pointed out that although Wu had knowledge of Chinese bureaucracy and politics, the novel itself does not include any political details that "a fairly well-read commoner could not have known."
One interpretive tradition views Journey to the West as the outcome of a writing game which was popular among Chinese literati.
The overall plot of Journey to the West was already a part of Chinese folk and literary tradition in the form of "folk stories with informal language", a poetic novelette, and a six-part drama play series, which was transcribed and written down, before the current version was written. Fragments of an earlier text, Journey to the West as Storytelling, are recorded in other texts. The narrative threads from this earlier text which survive are the wager between the Dragon King of the Jing River and fortune teller Yuan Shoucheng and the contest between the pilgrims and the three Taoist demons in Cart Slow Kingdom.
Regardless of the origins and authorship, Journey to the West has become the authoritative version of these folk stories, and while the cumulative authorship of the text is acknowledged, Wu is generally accepted as the author of the 1592 printed version widely considered canonical.
Historical basis
Although Journey to the West is a work of fantasy, it is based on the actual journey of the Chinese monk Xuanzang (602–664), who traveled to India in the 7th century in order to seek out Buddhist scriptures and bring them back to China. Xuanzang was a monk at Jingtu Temple in the imperial capital Chang'an (present-day Xi'an) during the late Sui dynasty and early Tang dynasty. He left Chang'an in 629, in defiance of Emperor Taizong of Tang's ban on travel. Helped by sympathetic Buddhists, Xuanzang traveled via Gansu and Qinghai to Kumul (Hami), thence following the Tian Shan mountains to Turpan. He then crossed regions that are today Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, into Gandhara, in what is today northern Pakistan, in 630. Xuanzang traveled throughout India for the next thirteen years, visiting important Buddhist pilgrimage sites, studying at the ancient university at Nalanda, and debating the rivals of Buddhism.
Xuanzang left India in 643 and arrived back in Chang'an in 646. Although he had defied the imperial travel ban when he left, Xuanzang received a warm welcome from Emperor Taizong upon his return. The emperor provided money and support for Xuanzang's projects. He joined Da Ci'en Monastery (Monastery of Great Maternal Grace), where he led the building of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda to store the scriptures and icons he had brought back from India. He recorded his journey in the book Great Tang Records on the Western Regions. With the support of the emperor, he established an institute at Yuhua Gong () monastery dedicated to translating the scriptures he had brought back. His translation and commentary work established him as the founder of the Faxiang tradition of Buddhism. Xuanzang died on 7 March, 664. The Xingjiao Monastery was established in 669 to house his ashes.
Synopsis
The novel has 100 chapters that can be divided into four unequal parts.
First Part The first part, which includes chapters 1–7, is a self-contained introduction to the main story. It deals entirely with the earlier exploits of Sun Wukong, a monkey born from a stone nourished by the Five Elements, who learns the art of the Tao, 72 polymorphic transformations, combat, and secrets of immortality, and whose guile and force earns him the name Qitian Dasheng (). His powers grow to match the forces of all of the Taoist deities, and the prologue culminates in Sun's rebellion against Heaven after growing disillusioned with his post in the celestial bureaucracy. Hubris proves his downfall when the Buddha manages to trap him under a mountain, sealing it with a talisman for 500 years. His given name loosely means "Monkey Awakened to Emptiness (Śūnyatā)" and appears right away in chapter 13 and becomes Tang Sanzang's first srāvaka ("disciple") in the journey. The most intelligent, powerful, and violent of the srāvaka, he is constantly reproved for his brutality by Tang Sanzang. Ultimately, he can only be controlled by a magic gold ring that Guanyin has placed around his head, which causes him unbearable headaches when Sanzang chants the Ring Tightening Mantra. In the story, Wukong is an allegorical representation of the human mind, thought, and impulse, and is often nicknamed the "monkey mind".
Second Part The second part (chapters 8–12) introduces Tang Sanzang through his early biography and the background to his great journey. Dismayed that "the land of the South (i.e., Tang China) knows only greed, hedonism, promiscuity, and sins," the Buddha instructs the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, who is commonly known in China as Guanyin, to search China for someone to take the Buddhist sutras of "transcendence and persuasion for good will" back. Part of this section also relates to how Tang Sanzang becomes a monk and comes about being sent on this pilgrimage by Emperor Taizong, who previously escaped death with the help of an official in the Underworld. It also reveals his past life as a disciple of the Buddha named "Golden Cicada" (). In the story, Tang Sanzang is considered an allegorical representation of the human heart.
Third Part The third and longest section of the work is chapters 13–99, an episodic adventure story in which Tang Sanzang sets out to bring back Buddhist scriptures from Leiyin Temple on Vulture Peak in India, but encounters various evils along the way. The section is set in the sparsely populated lands along the Silk Road between China and India. The geography described in the book is, however, almost entirely fantasy; once Tang Sanzang departs Chang'an, the Tang capital, and crosses the frontier (somewhere in Gansu province), he finds himself in a wilderness of deep gorges and tall mountains, inhabited by demons and animal spirits who regard him as a potential meal (since his flesh was believed to give immortality to whoever ate it), with the occasional hidden monastery or royal city-state amidst the harsh setting.
Episodes consist of 1–4 chapters and usually involve Tang Sanzang being captured and having his life threatened while his disciples try to find an ingenious (and often violent) way of liberating him. Although some of Tang Sanzang's predicaments are political and involve ordinary human beings, they more frequently consist of run-ins with various demons, many of whom turn out to be earthly manifestations of heavenly beings (whose sins will be negated by eating the flesh of Tang Sanzang) or animal-spirits with enough Taoist spiritual merit to assume semi-human forms. The demon-spirits include a white bone demon, a goldfish demon, a lion demon, an elephant demon, and a roc demon, among numerous other demons. Some of the demons are she-demons who want to marry the Tang Monk in efforts to steal from him his yang energy. They include a mink demon and a scorpion demon.
Chapters 13–22 do not follow this structure precisely, as they introduce Tang Sanzang's three other disciples besides Sun Wukong, who inspired or goaded by Guanyin, meet and agree to serve him along the way in order to atone for their sins in their past lives.