青毛狮子怪假烏雞王 · 30
Leaf 30 of the pilgrimage · 青毛獅子 The Blue-Maned Lion
Blue-Furred Lion 青毛狮子怪
In Journey to the West 西遊記 (c. 1592) · a demon on the road west · nicknamed 青毛獅子 “The Blue-Maned Lion”
He sits three years on a foreign throne wearing a dead man, with no weapon and no plan, over an accounting of three days that somebody owed a buddha.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 36
The Precious Grove Refuses Lodging
寶林不容Nothing in Wuji would take the pilgrims in: the temple outside the walls refused them and they bedded down in the ruin among its broken clay guardians.
- ch. 37
Pushing the King into the Well
井底遺魂That night the drowned king stood at the monk's couch in water and told how a Taoist he had called his brother had pushed him into the garden well at the fifth-month feast.
- ch. 38
The Body Drawn from the Well
八戒馱屍Wukong cleared the thing that kept the well-house and let Bajie down on a rope for the body, which had lain three years in the dark with its face unmarked.
- ch. 39
Reviving the King with a Pill
九轉還魂The monkey went up to the Taoist heaven for a pill, took the nine-turn soul-returning one in person, and set the dead king up on his elbows in the temple yard.
- ch. 39
Two Kings in One Hall
雙王並立The resurrected king walked into his own hall dressed exactly like the man who had replaced him, and the whole court looked at two of him and said nothing.
- ch. 39
Manjusri Catches the Lion
文殊收獅Wukong had the false king at the corner of the hall before Manjusri cried out to stop; he seized the lion, and then the bodhisattva's hair, before he would listen.
結局 The ending
He is reclaimed, not killed. Manjusri explains it as bookkeeping: a buddha's envoy had once been locked in that garden for three days, so the king got three years in the well, and the lion goes back to Five-Topped Mountain with the debt discharged. The true king takes his throne again and rules on — the only restoration on this part of the road that is simply a restoration.
The book itself: why the monkey was pinned, which translation — The 500 years · The translations · The 81 trials