Table Of Content西
游
記
REVISED EDITION Volume I
The Journey to the West
Translated and Edited by Anthony C. Yu
The University of Chicago Press Chicago London
Anthony C.Yu is the Carl Darling Buck Distin- Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
guished Service Professor Emeritus in the Hu-
manities and Professor Emeritus of Religion and Wu, Cheng'en, ca. 1500-ca. 1582, author.
Literature in the Divinity School; also in the De- [Xi you ji. English. 2012]
partments of Comparative Literature, East Asian The journey to the West / translated and edited
Languages and Civilizations, and English Lan- by Anthony G Yu. — Revised edition,
guage and Literature, and the Committee on Social pages ； cm
Thought. His scholarly work focuses on compara- Summary: The story ofXuanzang, the monk who
tive study of both literary and religious traditions. went from China to India in quest of Buddhist
scriptures.
Publication of this volume was made possible by a Includes bibliographical references and index.
grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for ISBN： 978-0-226-97131-5 (v.i: cloth: alkaline pa-
International Scholarly Exchange (USA). per) —ISBN： 0-226-97131-7 (v. 1.: cloth: alkaline pa-
per) —ISBN： 978-0-226-97132-2 (v. 1: pbk: alkaline
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 paper) — ISBN： 0-226-97132-5 (v. 1: pbk.: alkaline
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London paper) — ISBN： 978-0-226-97140-7 (v. 1: e-book)
© 2012 by The University of Chicago (print) — ISBN： 978-0-226-97133-9 (v. 2: cloth: alka-
All rights reserved. Published 2012. line paper) — ISBN： 0-226-97133-3 (v. 2 : cloth: alka-
Printed in the United States of America line paper) — ISBN： 978-0-226-97134-6 (v. 2: paper-
back :alkaline paper) — ISBN： 0-226-97134-1 (v. 2:
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 12345 paperback: alkaline paper) — ISBN： 978-0-226-
97141-4 (v. 2: e-book) (print) — ISBN： 978-0-226-
ISBN-13:978-0-226-97131-5 (cloth) 97136-0 (v. 3: cloth: alkaline paper) — ISBN： 0-226-
ISBN-13:978-0-226-97132-2 (paper) 97136-8 (v. 3: cloth: alkaline paper) — ISBN： 978-0-
ISBN-13:978-0-226-97140-7 (e-book) 226-97137-7 (v. 3: paperback: alkaline paper)—
ISBN-IO: 0-226-97131-7 (cloth) ISBN： 0-226-97137-6 (v. 3: paperback: alkaline
ISBN-IO: 0-226-97132-5 (paper) paper) — ISBN： 978-0-226-97142-1 (v. 3: e-book)
(print) — ISBN： 978-0-226-97138-4 (v. 4: cloth: alka-
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(v. 4 : e-book) 1. Xuanzang, ca. 596-664—Fiction.
I. Yu, Anthony C, 1938-, translator, editor. II. Title.
PL2697.H7SE5 2012
895.1346—dc23
2012002836
© This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO
Z3948-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
FOR Priscilla Christopher
上士聞道，勤而行之。
中士聞道，若存若亡。
下士聞道，大笑之；不笑，不足以為道。
(Daodejing 41)
The superior student who hears about
the Way practices it diligently.
The middling student who hears about
the Way now keeps it and now loses it.
The inferior student who hears about
the Way laughs at it loudly;
If he did not laugh, it would have
fallen short of the Way.
Die Sprache driikt niemals etwas
vollstandig aus, sondern hebt nur
ein ihr hervorstechend scheinen-
des Merkmal hervor.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE,
"Darstellung der Antiken Rhetorik"
Language never expresses something
fully, but only highlights some
significant characteristic feature.
Contents
Preface to the Revised Edition ix
Preface to the First Edition xiii
Abbreviations xvii
Introduction 1
1 The divine root conceives, its source revealed;
Mind and nature nurtured, the Great Dao is born. 99
2 Fully awoke to Bodhi's wondrous truths;
He cuts off Mara, returns to the root, and joins Primal Spirit. 116
3 Four Seas and a Thousand Mountains all bow to submit;
From Ninefold Darkness ten species* names are removed. 131
4 Appointed a BanHorse, could he be content?
Named Equal to Heaven, he's still not appeased. 145
5 Disrupting the Peach Festival, the Great Sage steals elixir;
With revolt in Heaven, many gods would seize the fiend. 160
6 Guanyin, attending the banquet, inquires into the cause;
The Little Sage, exerting his power, subdues the Great Sage. 174
7 From the Eight Trigrams Brazier the Great Sage escapes;
Beneath the Five Phases Mountain, Mind Monkey is still 188
8 Our Buddha makes scriptures to impart ultimate bliss;
Guanyin receives the decree to go up to Chang'an. 201
9 Chen Guangrui, going to his post, meets disaster;
Monk River Float, avenging his parents, repays his roots. 217
10 The Old Dragon King's foolish schemes transgress Heaven's decrees;
Prime Minister Wei's letter seeks help from an official of the dead. 231
11 Having toured the Underworld, Taizong returns to life;
Having presented melons and fruits, Liu Quan marries again. 252
12 The Tang emperor,f irmlys incere, convenes a Grand Mass;
Guanyin, in epiphany, converts Gold Cicada. 269
13 In the den of tigers, the Gold Star brings deliverance;
At Double-Fork Ridge, Boqin detains the monk. 293
14 Mind Monkey returns to the Right;
The Six Robbers vanish from sight. 306
15 At Serpent Coil Mountain, the gods give secret protection;
At Eagle Grief Stream, the Horse ofthe Will is reined. 321
16 At Guanyin Hall the monks plotfor the treasure;
At Black Wind Mountain a monster steals the cassock. 334
17 Pilgrim Sun greatly disturbs the Black Wind Mountain;
Guanshiyin brings to submission the bear monster. 349
18 At Guanyin Hall the Tang Monk leaves his ordeal;
At Gao Village the Great Sage casts out the monster. 367
19 At Cloudy Paths Cave, Wukong takes in Eight Rules;
At Pagoda Mountain, Tripitaka receives the Heart Sutra. 378
20 At Yellow Wind Ridge the Tang Monk meets adversity;
In mid-mountain, Eight Rules strives to be first 393
21 The Viharapalas prepare lodging for the Great Sage;
Lingji ofSumeru crushes the wind demon. 407
22 Eight Rulesf ightsf iercelya t the Flowing-Sand River;
Moksa by order receives Wujing's submission. 421
23 Tripitaka does notforget his origin;
The Four Sages test the priestly mind. 435
24 At Long Life Mountain the Great Immortal detains his old friend;
At Five Villages Abbey, Pilgrim steals the ginseng fruit 450
25 The Zhenyuan Immortal gives chase to catch the scripture monk;
Pilgrim Sun greatly disturbs Five Villages Abbey. 465
Notes 479
Index 535
Preface to the Revised Edition
A twofold purpose motivated my decision in 1969 to attempt a plenary En-
glish translation of The Journey to the West On the matter of literary form,
I wanted my version to rectify the distorted picture provided by Arthur
Waley's justly popular abridgment (i.e., Monkey, Folk Novel of China by Wu
Chfeng-en)f which regrettably excised all poetic segments and cut out or re-
vised prose passages at will. I felt strongly that it was high time that a classic
Chinese novel like the one in question, though of extraordinary length and
complexity, should be read in its entirety and not in bits and pieces. On the
matter of the novel's understanding and critical interpretation, I wanted
to redress an imbalance of emphasis championed by Dr. Hu Shi, who pro-
vided the Waley volume with the following observation: “ [F]reed from all
kinds of allegorical interpretations by Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucianist
commentators, Monkey is simply a book of good humor, profound non-
sense, good-natured satire, and delightful entertainment" {Monkey, p. 5).
Many other Chinese scholars for most of the twentieth century shared this
view. My own encounter with the text since childhood, under the kind and
skillful tutelage of my late grandfather, who used the novel as a textbook
for teaching me Chinese during the years of the Sino-Japanese war, had
long convinced me that this work was nothing if not one of the world's
most finely wrought literary allegories. The past four decades of studying,
translating, and teaching it at the University of Chicago have also made me
a happy witness to new directions in its scholarly research and interpre-
tation. The persistent efforts of Japanese, European, American, and Chi-
nese scholars—in diaspora and on the mainland during the last two de-
cades—have joined to enlarge dramatically our understanding of the texfs
sources and religious context, especially those belonging to the Daoist re-
ligion since the late Tang.
Completed in 1983, the first full-length English translation of the novel
spawned its own ironies. No sooner had all four volumes appeared than
friends and colleagues far and near protested their unwieldy length, for
general readers and for classroom usage. After years of resistance to pleas
for a shorter edition, I decided, when approaching retirement in 2005, that
an abridged version was indeed needed for classroom and readers' needs.
The proposed text of about thirty-five chapters would (1) convert the old
Wade-Giles system of romanization to the now globally accepted Hanyu
X ：： PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
Pinyin system for all Chinese names, locales, and terms; (2) remove most
scholarly footnotes and all Chinese texts; (3) provide a new and very brief
introduction for general readers; and (4) include minor corrections of
rhetoric and vocabulary where needed. The one-volume edition, The Mon-
key and the Monk, An Abridgment of The Journey to the West, was published
in 2006 by the University of Chicago Press.
Production of this abridged version, paradoxically, made me realize fur-
ther the endless effort of literary translation, in some ways analogous to a
performer's varied readings of a familiar music score. The linguistic signs
or musical notations remain the same, but the understanding of them
may greatly alter. On the matter of tempo alone, a comparison of Glenn
Gould's recordings of J. S. Bach's "The Complete Goldberg Variations" in
1955 and 1981 yields illuminating differences. My abridgment in every as-
pect (shorter introduction, simplified notes, emendations) certainly beto-
kens awareness and assumptions of new knowledge. The first full-length
edition, in turn, now displays quite a few pockets of datedness. I resolved
that I would devote my new-found "leisure" in retirement to attempt a ma-
consistent with, but not entirely identical to, those of the abridged volume,
would be to (1) convert the entire romanization system to Pinyin; (2) re-
store and update or augment, where necessary, all scholarly annotations;
(3) provide a major restatement of the introduction that, apart from pro-
viding basic information about the novel, would study the most impor-
tant new scholarship on literary issues, religious traditions (especially on
identified sources in the Buddhist and Daoist Canons and in extracanoni-
prose and poetic segments of the translation to make semantics and pros-
ody more concise. Because the five pilgrims in the novel, like characters
in fiction of another language (e.g., Russian), have multiple names, I have
made uniform the way I translate them. Formal names and surnames are
romanized (e.g., Chen Xuanzang, Sun Wukong). Informal names or nick-
names become direct translations (e.g., Pilgrim for the Chinese "Xingzhe"
[disciple or acolyte], Eight Rules for “Bajie,” a change in the peijorative title
for Monkey from the romanized "Bimawen" to "BanHorsePlague”).1 My
hope is that this revised version, like volumes of the Arden Shakespeare,
Third Series, or Dorothy L. Sayer's The Divine Comedy, will last for some time
as a teaching edition.
The timely award of an Emeriti Fellowship by the Mellon Foundation
in 2006 provided immense encouragement and assistance for the initial
stage of technical work (scanning the four volumes and rendering the two
thousand-plus pages in free text format), purchase of needed equipment
and materials, and some travel to different libraries and centers. Professor
