Introduction to Sun Wu-kong
In which we meet the real hero of the book.
Monkey or Sun Wu-kong, who repeatedly warns Tripitaka of his spiritual blindness, is, of course, the real hero of the book. He has already assumed the role of Tripitaka’s protector on the road. Wu Cheng’en has enlarged upon the deeds of Monkey and has consistently defined his hero’s character in terms of his spiritual detachment, his prankish humor, his restless energy, and his passionate devotion to his master.
Photo from the National Museum of Asian Art Collection.
Especially during the Tang (618 to 906 A.D.), merchants from Central Asia carried on an active trade in China, and they brought with them stories of their own regions, which stimulated the Chinese literati to compose tales of a romantic and supernatural cast. The Rāmāyana1 may or may not have contributed to the character Sun Wu-kong, but there is no doubt that his many tricks and feats along with other supernatural motives in the novel are ultimately traceable to the influence of Indian as well as Persian and Arab literature.
Monkey’s ambition is to seek immortality, to perpetuate his enjoyment of life. He presently undertakes a long voyage across the oceans to seek a master able to teach him how to conquer death. Allegorically, it is a quest for spiritual understanding, but in the larger mythical framework of the novel it is also a quest for magical power. Monkey was hatched from a stone egg, under the infl uence of the sun and moon. Like many other Chinese novels, Journey begins at the beginning, with the creation myth. In this regard, Monkey’s discontent with a pastoral mode of life and his ambition to seek power and knowledge can be seen as signs of a conscious striving upwardfrom inanimate stone to animal shape with human intelligence to the highest spiritual att ainment possible. Until this striving is deflected into the Buddhist path of obedient service, following his humiliating defeat in the palm of Buddha, Monkey is but the smartest of all the monsters, who share with him this unquenchable desire for evolution.
If humanitarian pity remains an endearing trait of Tripitaka, then, with all his superior understanding and mocking detachment, Monkey is also the antithesis of Buddhist emptiness in his passionate att achment to the cause of the journey and to his master. It is this passionate devotion to his home, to Tripitaka and his cause, that sets Monkey apart from the rest of the pilgrims. Above and beyond his mythic and comic roles, he shows himself as an endearing person subject to misunderstanding and jealousy and given to frequent outbursts of genuine emotion. He, too, belies his superior attainment in Buddhist wisdom with his incorrigible humanity.
Ramayana, (Sanskrit: “Rama’s Journey”) shorter of the two great epic poems of India, the other being the Mahabharata (“Great Epic of the Bharata Dynasty”). The Ramayana was composed in Sanskrit, probably not before 300 bce, by the poet Valmiki and in its present form consists of some 24,000 couplets divided into seven books.