九灵元圣九曲盤桓洞 · 54
Leaf 54 of the pilgrimage · 九頭獅子 The Nine-Headed Lion
Nine-Spirit Primordial Sage 九灵元圣
In Journey to the West 西遊記 (c. 1592) · a demon on the road west · nicknamed 九頭獅子 “The Nine-Headed Lion”
The local gods refuse to touch him: the land-god says plainly that none but his owner can take him, and his owner's keeper was three days drunk.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 88
The Weapons Vanish from the Forge
兵刃被竊The three brothers taught the prefecture's princes to fight, then let the smiths copy their arms from patterns: ten thousand catties of iron bought, the originals laid out in the forge yard for a few days, shining so that a lion seventy li away could see them. In the night the originals went.
- ch. 89
The Rake Banquet Card
釘鈀之宴Wukong froze two wolf-headed patrols on the road, took the twenty taels they carried to buy the banquet's pigs and sheep, and read the card: a Rake Banquet at dawn, from his grandson the Yellow Lion to Grandsire Nine-Spirit. Then the three brothers went up as a pig merchant and his two oddly named guards.
- ch. 90
Six Taken in Nine Mouths
九口啣人He came out weaponless and shook eight heads beside his own. One mouth took the monk, one Bajie, one the old king, three more the princes: six of nine filled, three still empty, and he shouted that he would go first.
- ch. 90
Willow Rods on the Bound Monkey
柳棍打猴He had Wukong bound and beaten with thorn and willow rods for the capture of his seven lion grandsons; the rods broke, night came, and it was still not counted. The old lion went off to nap, three guards were told to watch — captives themselves — and at the deep of night they nodded and Wukong shrank out of the cords.
- ch. 90
The Land-God's Deposition
土地供狀The guardian spirits brought him the district land-god under escort, and the god gave away everything: Bamboo-Joint Mountain, Nine-Twist Lingering Cave, and that the sage's owner sits in the Eastern Mystery Palace, and no one else need try.
- ch. 90
The Keeper Drunk, the Lion Loose
獅奴醉失The keeper had found a jar of Laojun's gift to the palace, the Nectar of Transmigration, drank it, and slept three days drunk, leaving the beast unchained. One day in heaven is a year in the world, said the Tianzun — and the lion had been gone two or three.
- ch. 90
Home on the Kneeling Lion's Back
騎歸妙巖The lion came out to fight, saw his master standing on the cliff, and went down on four paws with his head in the dust. His keeper seized the mane and beat his neck a hundred times for the shame of it, a brocade saddle-guard was put on him, and the Tianzun rode him home.
結局 The ending
He is not killed: a brocade saddle-guard goes on his back and he carries his master home through the clouds, having taken the court of Yuhua and the pilgrims into six of his nine mouths at once. Bajie burned the cave to a kiln of broken tiles; the six live lions were killed and skinned, their meat cut into lumps of a liang or two and handed round the city, for a taste and for a fright.
The book itself: why the monkey was pinned, which translation — The 500 years · The translations · The 81 trials