Monkey

One of China’s most dearly beloved mythological figures, Sun Wukong (“Monkey Awakened to Emptiness”) is best known to western audiences as The Monkey King, or simply Monkey. He appears the classic Chinese tale “Journey to the West”, first published anonymously in the 1590s, and popularly thought to be the work of the scholar Wu Cheng’en. Back at the dawn of the universe, there was a pleasant mountain of fruit and flowers. A magic stone stood on top of it which had been basking in the glorious emanations of Heaven, Earth, the Sun and the Moon since the start of creation. The stone eventually gave birth to a stone egg, which hatched a stone monkey, known then as Shi Hou.

Monkey King by anc (c) Ivan Ricci

Monkey had strength, fearlessness and curiosity beyond all other monkeys, and was recognised as their king. He soon realised the inevitability of death, and became determined to conquer it. He badgered a sage into teaching him the secrets of Taoism, gained his familiar name as Sun Wukong. The sage taught him a huge range of magical tricks, including changing his shape, cloud-somersaulting to travel more than 30,000 miles in a single bound, and making copies of himself. When he could learn no more, he went and caused chaos for the Eastern Sea-Dragon King until the dragon gave him a range of magic weapons. The most important was Ruyi Jingu Bang, the Gold-Banded Cudgel, which weighed more than 7 tons, and had previously held the sea in place.

The Dragon-King’s gifts made Monkey utterly uncontrollable, and in the end the forces of Heaven decided to give him a divine title and job, to help control him. This gambit failed too, and their efforts to control the irrepressible Monkey managed only to give him eternal life, and to increase his strength, resilience and magical power. Eventually, with the courts of Heaven themselves in Chaos, Buddha stepped in. After a period of time buried under a mountain, Monkey was given a chance to redeem himself by helping the monk Sanzang in his epic journey to India to fetch a trove of Buddhist sutras. To keep him in line, an unshakeable golden band was placed on his head; when Sanzang magically activated it, the band tightened agonisingly.

Monkey by Isle of Troggs

The Journey to the West and back took seventeen years. Monkey and his equally ambivalent fellow transgressors against heaven, Pig (Zu Bajie, or ‘Eight Commandments Pig’, after his eight horrible transgressions) and Sand (Sha Wuching, ‘Sand awakened to purity’) defended Sanzang faithfully all manner of horrible dangers, getting into many terrible scrapes. Eventually, the party arrived back in China, and were lauded as heroes. Monkey was eventually granted Buddhahood in recognition for his service, his growth in wisdom, and his immense power.

An abridged version of “Journey to the West” was translated into English by Arthur Waley as “Monkey” (1942), and the story was made into a Japanese TV series titled “Saiyuki” (1978). This was also titled “Monkey”, after Waley’s work, when the BBC dubbed it into English. Both book and series have proved highly influential in the west.