蟒蛇精七絕山紅蟒 · 44
Leaf 44 of the pilgrimage · 红鳞大蟒 The Red-Scaled Python
Python Spirit 蟒蛇精
In Journey to the West 西遊記 (c. 1592) · a demon on the road west · nicknamed 红鳞大蟒 “The Red-Scaled Python”
She has no treasure, no patron and no voice: Wukong asks her three times who she is, and the book explains that she has not yet learned to speak.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 67
Three Summers of the Night Wind
駝羅莊Five hundred households at Camel-Hump Village had lived three summers with a wind that came out of the west at night, ate the cattle and horses, and swallowed men and women whole.
- ch. 67
The Two Lantern Eyes
兩盞燈Wukong stood her off in the old man's courtyard until daylight against two eyes the size of lanterns; Bajie took them for a servant going ahead with a lamp and had to be corrected.
- ch. 67
The Tail Still Outside the Hole
倒扯蛇She dived into the hole with seven or eight feet of tail outside; Bajie hauled at it with both hands and moved nothing, then was knocked flat at the far end when Wukong struck the front.
- ch. 67
The Staff Propped in the Gorge
腹中撐棒She coiled to swallow Bajie and took Wukong standing up instead; inside he propped her gorge on the staff until it arched like a bridge, then ran a mast of it out through her back.
- ch. 67
Dead in the Road, Stabbed Again
打死蛇She ran twenty li and died in the road. Bajie stabbed the dead carcase for the pleasure of it, saying it had been his life's sport to beat a killed snake, and they dragged her home by the tail.
結局 The ending
The village feeds the pilgrims five days and offers a thousand mu of fields, which Wukong refuses because a title-deed means taxes, corvee and a curfew he would have to keep. Then Bajie eats two shi of rice, takes the shape of a boar, and roots the persimmon-sludge lane at Seven-Peak Mountain open from end to end, which is the only road out.
The book itself: why the monkey was pinned, which translation — The 500 years · The translations · The 81 trials