独角兕大王金兜山金兜洞 · 35
Leaf 35 of the pilgrimage · 獨角兕大王 Great King of the Single-Horned Si
Lone-Horned Ox Demon 独角兕大王
In Journey to the West 西遊記 (c. 1592) · a demon on the road west · nicknamed 獨角兕大王 “Great King of the Single-Horned Si”
He beat the whole pantheon without ever winning a fight: everything thrown at him was picked up by a ring he wore to bed.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 50
The Step Outside the Circle
畫圈遭擒Wukong draws a circle in the road with his club and swears it is stronger than bronze walls; the monk, hungry and cold, steps outside it and the mountain's cave takes him, the pig, the friar and the horse.
- ch. 51
One Ring Takes Six Weapons
圈子套刀Nezha loses six weapons to one cast of the ring, then the thunder-god's hammer, the pagoda king's sword, and Wukong's own club, which next morning stands leaning against the east wall of the cave.
- ch. 51
Fire-Dragons Taken by the Ring
水火無功Li Jing reasons that nothing in the ring can take water or fire; the fire department's fire-dragons and fire-horses are taken, and so is half the Yellow River poured out of a jade bowl.
- ch. 52
The Ring That Took the Sand
金丹陷足The Buddha looks with the wisdom-eye, knows exactly who it is, and refuses to say — a loud monkey would only go squabbling up to Spirit Mountain and blame him. He lends eighteen arhats and eighteen grains of golden cinnabar sand to mire the demon's feet. The ring takes the sand.
- ch. 52
The Yellow Dog-Flea
黃皮虼蚤Wukong goes in at night and finds the ring worn on the demon's bare arm like a beaded bracelet, never removed; he turns into a yellow dog-flea and bites him twice. The ox-man only pulls the ring higher and sleeps.
- ch. 52
The Plantain Fan Takes the Ring
芭蕉扇Laojun comes down from the Heaven of Resentment with his plantain fan: one wave and the ring is caught out of the air, two and the demon's legs go soft under him.
結局 The ending
Laojun blows immortal breath through the ring, pierces the ox's nose, knots his own robe-strap to it and rides the beast home; the narrator stops to say that is where a bull's nose-ring gets its name. Nothing is executed. The club and every stolen weapon come back out of the cave, and the fault is laid, in the text, on a boy who found one pill in the alchemy room and fell asleep.
The book itself: why the monkey was pinned, which translation — The 500 years · The translations · The 81 trials