大鹏金翅鸟獅駝洞三大王 · 49
Leaf 49 of the pilgrimage · 雲程萬里鵬 Peng of the Ten-Thousand-Li Journey
Golden-Winged Peng 大鹏金翅鸟
In Journey to the West 西遊記 (c. 1592) · a demon on the road west · nicknamed 雲程萬里鵬 “Peng of the Ten-Thousand-Li Journey”
He is the only demon on the road who outruns the somersault cloud, the only one the Buddha calls family, and the only one who bargains about his food before accepting capture.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 74
A Kingdom Devoured Centuries Ago
獅駝國The youngest king did not live on the ridge. Four hundred li west he had eaten a whole kingdom five hundred years earlier — king, mandarins and every citizen — and came to his brothers' cave purely because he was frightened of Wukong.
- ch. 74
The Vase of Two Breaths
陰陽二氣瓶His own treasure, carried by thirty-six demons in the heaven's-rotation number: a seven-jewelled eight-trigram vase of the two breaths, in which a silent prisoner stays cool and a speaking one is burned, bitten by forty snakes and finished by three fire dragons.
- ch. 75
The Three Hairs Become a Drill
鑽穿瓶底Shut in with his ankles scorched soft, he remembered the three life-saving hairs Guanyin had given him at Snake-Coil Mountain, turned them into a diamond drill, a bamboo shaving and a cotton thread, and opened the bottom of his own coffin.
- ch. 75
The Vase Emptied by a Gnat
瓶空者控He escaped as a gnat, sat on the lion's head and let the vase go light in the bearers' hands, so that the demon on the wall said the jar was empty and one of the carriers answered, son, it is empty because he has gone — and Wukong left the drilled vase behind as a chamber-pot.
- ch. 77
Two Beats of One Wing
一翅九萬When the plan failed he let the two elder brothers take the monk and Sha and Bajie, then caught Wukong himself in two beats of one wing, the bird's flight being ninety thousand li to the monk's pilgrim's ten thousand eight hundred.
- ch. 77
The Splayed Wing Sinew
鵲巢貫頂The Buddha offered his own head, changed it to a piece of raw red meat, and the peng struck at it and splayed the sinew of his wing, so that he could not rise and had to stand on the crown of the man he was sent to destroy.
結局 The ending
He complains aloud that the Buddha's heaven is a poor household — one bowl of vegetarian fare against an infinity of human flesh — and is paid in the only currency the book honours: every good deed done anywhere is offered to his mouth first. He stays as a guardian in the flame above the Buddha's head, having been the one who said where the monk was, alive, in an iron chest.
The book itself: why the monkey was pinned, which translation — The 500 years · The translations · The 81 trials