Wu Cheng-en - Journey to the West (vol. 1)

The dragon stretched its sharp claws,

The monkey raised his gold-banded cudgel.

The beard of one hung in threads of white jade,

The other's eyes flashed like golden lamps.

The pearls in the dragon's beard gave off a coloured mist,

The iron club in the other's hands danced like a whirlwind.

One was a wicked son who had wronged his parents;

The father, the evil spirit who had worsted heavenly generals.

Both had been through trouble and suffering,

And now they were to use their abilities to win merit.

Coming and going, fighting and resting, wheeling and turning, they battled on for a very long time until the dragon's strength was exhausted and his muscles numb. Unable to resist any longer, it turned around, dived into the water, and lay low at the bottom of the stream. It pretended to be deaf as the Monkey King cursed and railed at it, and did not emerge again.

Monkey could do nothing, so he had to report to Sanzang, “Master, I swore at that ogre till it came out, and after fighting me for ages it fled in terror. It's now in the water and won't come out again.”

“Are you sure that it really ate our horse?” Sanzang asked.

“What a thing to say,” said Monkey, “If it hadn't eaten the horse, it wouldn't have dared to say a word or fight against me.”

“When you killed that tiger the other day you said you had ways of making dragons and tigers submit to you, so how comes it that you couldn't beat this one today?” Monkey had never been able to stand provocation, so when Sanzang mocked him this time he showed something of his divine might.

“Say no more, say no more. I'll have another go at it and then we'll see who comes out on top.”

The Monkey King leapt to the edge of the ravine, and used a magical way of throwing rivers and seas into turmoil to make the clear waters at the bottom of the Eagle's Sorrow Gorge as turbulent as the waves of the Yellow River in spate. The evil dragon's peace was disturbed as he lurked in the depths of the waters, and he thought, “How true it is that blessings never come in pairs and troubles never come singly. Although I've been accepting my fate here for less than a year since I escaped the death penalty for breaking the laws of Heaven, I would have to run into this murderous devil.”

The more he thought about it, the angrier he felt, and unable to bear the humiliation a moment longer he jumped out of the stream cursing, “Where are you from, you bloody devil, coming here to push me around?”

“Never you mind where I'm from,” Monkey replied. “I'll only spare your life if you give back that horse.”

“That horse of yours is in my stomach, and I can't sick it up again, can I? I'm not giving it back, so what about it?”

“If you won't give it back, then take this! I'm only killing you to make you pay for the horse's life.” The two of them began another bitter struggle under the mountain, and before many rounds were up the little dragon could hold out no longer. With a shake of his body he turned himself into a water-snake and slithered into the undergrowth.

The Monkey King chased it with his cudgel in his hands, but when he pushed the grass aside to find the snake the three gods inside his body exploded, and smoke poured from his seven orifices. He uttered the magic word om, thus calling out the local tutelary god and the god of the mountain, who both knelt before him and reported their arrival.

“Put out your ankles,” Monkey said, “while I give you five strokes each of my cudgel to work off my temper.” The two gods kowtowed and pleaded pitifully, “We beg the Great Sage to allow us petty gods to report.”

“What have you got to say?” Monkey asked.

“We didn't know when you emerged after your long sufferings, Great Sage,” they said, “which is why we didn't come to meet you. We beg to be forgiven.”

“In that case,” Monkey said, “I won't beat you, but I'll ask you this instead: where does that devil dragon in the Eagle's Sorrow Gorge come from, and why did he grab my master's white horse and eat it?”

“Great Sage, you never had a master,” said the two gods, “and you were a supreme Immortal with an undisturbed essence who would not submit to Heaven or Earth, so how does this master's horse come in?”

“You two don't know that either,” Monkey replied. “Because of that business of offending against Heaven, I had to suffer for five hundred years. Now I've been converted by the Bodhisattva Guanyin, and she's sent a priest who's come from the Tang Empire to rescue me. She told me to become his disciple and go to the Western Heaven to visit the Buddha and ask for the scriptures. As we were passing this way we lost my master's white horse.”

“Ah, so that's what's happening,” the gods said. “There never used to be any evil creatures in the stream, which ran wide and deep with water so pure that crows and magpies never dared to fly across it. This was because they would mistake their own reflections in it for other birds of their own kind and often go plummeting into the water. That's why it's called Eagle's Sorrow Gorge. Last year, when the Bodhisattva Guanyin was on her way to find a man to fetch the scriptures, she rescued a jade dragon and sent it to wait here for the pilgrim without getting up to any trouble. But when it's hungry it comes up on the bank to catch a few birds or a roedeer to eat. We can't imagine how it could be so ignorant as to clash with the Great Sage.”

“The first time he and I crossed swords we whirled around for a few rounds,” Brother Monkey replied. “The second time I swore at him but he wouldn't come out, so I stirred up his stream with a spell to throw rivers and seas into turmoil, after which he came out and wanted to have another go at me. He didn't realize how heavy my cudgel was, and he couldn't parry it, so he changed himself into a water snake and slithered into the undergrowth. I chased him and searched for him, but he's vanished without a trace.”

“Great Sage, you may not be aware that there are thousands of interconnected tunnels in this ravine, which is why the waters here run so deep. There is also a tunnel entrance round here that he could have slipped into. There's no need for you to be angry, Great Sage, or to search for it. If you want to catch the creature, all you have to do is to ask Guanyin to come here, and it will naturally submit.”

On receiving this suggestion Monkey told the local deity and the mountain god to come with him to see Sanzang and tell him all about what had happened previously. “If you go to ask the Bodhisattva to come here, when will you ever be back?” he asked, adding, “I'm terribly cold and hungry.”

Before the words were out of his mouth they heard the voice of the Gold-headed Revealer shouting from the sky, “Great Sage, there's no need for you to move. I'll go and ask the Bodhisattva to come here.” Monkey, who was delighted, replied, “This is putting you to great trouble, but please be as quick as you can.” The Revealer then shot off on his cloud to the Southern Sea. Monkey told the mountain god and the local deity to protect his master, and sent the Duty God of the Day to find some vegetarian food, while he himself patrolled the edge of the ravine.

The moment the Gold-headed Revealer mounted his cloud he reached the Southern Sea. Putting away his propitious glow, he went straight to the Purple Bamboo Grove on the island of Potaraka, where he asked the Golden Armour Devas and Moksa to get him an audience with the Bodhisattva.

“What have you come for?” the Bodhisattva asked.

“The Tang Priest,” the Revealer replied, “has lost his horse in the Eagle's Sorrow Gorge, and the Great Sage Sun Wukong is desperate, because they can neither go forward nor back. When the Great Sage asked the local deity he was told that the evil dragon you sent to the ravine, Bodhisattva, had swallowed it, so he has sent me to ask you to subdue this dragon and make it give back the horse.”