The opening cycle of the Ming dynasty novel Journey to the West, in which the stone-born monkey Sun Wukong gains supernatural power and immortality, steals a magic staff from the Dragon King, erases his own name from the underworld's register of the dead, and, insulted by a menial post given to him in the celestial bureaucracy, declares himself the Great Sage Equal to Heaven and wars openly against the gods, eating the Peaches of Immortality and Laozi's elixir pills along the way. The Buddha finally traps him beneath a mountain for five hundred years, setting up his later role as disciple and protector on the pilgrimage that gives the novel its name.
Facts
History
Historical NoteBefore his final imprisonment, Sun Wukong survives being placed in Laozi's Eight Trigrams Furnace for forty nine days meant to refine him to death, emerging instead with fire reddened eyes capable of piercing illusion and falsehood, an ordeal that toughens rather than destroys him before the Buddha finally subdues him. 2 Historical NoteThe episode in which Sun Wukong strikes his own name from the underworld's register of the dead is read within the novel's Buddhist and Daoist framing as a claim to stand outside the ordinary cycle of death and rebirth entirely, one of the acts that most directly provokes Heaven's attempt to bring him under control. 2 Historical NoteThe rebellion ends when the Buddha wagers Sun Wukong cannot leap beyond his own palm; the monkey king somersaults to what he believes is the edge of the world only to find he has never left the Buddha's hand, after which he is imprisoned beneath the Mountain of Five Elements for five hundred years. 2 Meaning
Central MotifPride and rebellion against a celestial order precede eventual redemption 1 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteBefore his rebellion, Sun Wukong studies for years under the Daoist patriarch Subhuti, who teaches him the seventy-two transformations and the cloud somersault capable of covering thousands of miles in a single leap, the very technique the Buddha later exploits by wagering that Sun Wukong cannot somersault beyond his own palm. 2 Scholarly NoteThe novel is read on several levels at once, as comic adventure, as a Buddhist and Daoist allegory of taming an unruly mind, Sun Wukong's own name means Awakened to Emptiness, and by some scholars as satire of Ming bureaucracy in its chaotic, hierarchy obsessed celestial court. 2 Text
Source TextJourney to the West (Wu Cheng'en, attributed); A Mission to Heaven (Richard trans., 1913) 1 Controversy
Point in DisputeJourney to the West circulated anonymously for nearly three centuries; the attribution to the Ming official Wu Cheng'en rests on early twentieth century textual and archival research by the scholar Hu Shih and remains probable rather than certain, and a widely discussed 2000 study argued instead for authorship by Li Chunfang. 2 Sources
Primary SourceEpisodes involving a rebellious monkey precede the Ming novel itself: a Song or Yuan dynasty prose narrative known through a Korean-preserved text, along with earlier zaju stage plays, already told versions of Sun Wukong's exploits, indicating the novel drew together and elaborated a pre-existing storytelling cycle rather than inventing the character. 2 Learn More
From Stone Monkey to Great Sage
Born from a stone egg atop the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, warmed into life by the elements themselves rather than born of any parent, the monkey who becomes Sun Wukong quickly distinguishes himself among the other monkeys by his boldness, leading them to discover a hidden paradise behind a waterfall and being crowned their king. Restless despite his new status, he travels far in search of the secret of immortality, eventually studying under a Daoist master who teaches him seventy-two transformations, cloud-somersaulting that carries him vast distances in an instant, and other powerful abilities.
Returning home, Sun Wukong terrorizes the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea into giving up a massive iron rod that can shrink to the size of a needle or grow to touch the heavens, the weapon he carries throughout the rest of his story, and forces his way into the underworld to strike his own name and those of his monkey subjects from the register that determines when mortal creatures must die, granting them all effective immortality by administrative erasure rather than any spiritual attainment.
The novel gives the monkey his name, Sun Wukong, only after this training, bestowed by his Daoist teacher and combining the surname Sun with a Buddhist-inflected personal name meaning Awakened to Emptiness, a naming that already hints at the disciple's eventual role even before the rebellion and long imprisonment that must come first, since a monkey that had learned wisdom without first learning the cost of pride would not, in the novel's own moral logic, have earned it.
War on Heaven and Five Hundred Years Under a Mountain
Alarmed at his growing power, the Jade Emperor attempts to placate Sun Wukong by summoning him to heaven and giving him a minor post as keeper of the imperial stables. Discovering the position's low rank, Sun Wukong is deeply insulted and returns to earth in open rebellion, declaring himself the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, a title the celestial court eventually and reluctantly grants him along with an honorary post that carries no real duties, an arrangement that satisfies him only until he is excluded from the Queen Mother's Peach Banquet, prompting him to gatecrash it, devour the peaches of immortality meant for the assembled gods, and consume Laozi's own elixir pills for good measure.
The ensuing war between Sun Wukong and the assembled forces of heaven, including some of its most powerful generals and deities, ends only when the Buddha intervenes personally, wagering that Sun Wukong cannot even leap beyond the Buddha's own palm; failing the wager after a journey he believes has taken him to the edge of the universe, Sun Wukong is trapped beneath a mountain, the Buddha's transformed hand, for five hundred years, a punishment that becomes the origin point for his later redemption as the powerful and loyal, if still unruly, disciple who protects the monk Tang Sanzang on the pilgrimage to India that gives the novel Journey to the West its title. Timothy Richard's 1913 abridged translation, the first attempt to render the novel into English, frames this material through an explicitly Christian allegorical lens that later, fuller translations have moved away from.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Sun Wukong's rebellion against heaven, from Journey to the West, carries folk cosmology in narrative form.
Sun Wukong is the protagonist of this rebellion cycle, the opening arc of Journey to the West.
The stone-born monkey Sun Wukong gains supernatural power and wars against the gods.
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