白鹿精清華仙府 · 51
Leaf 51 of the pilgrimage · 國丈 The Royal Father-in-Law
White Deer Spirit 白鹿精
In Journey to the West 西遊記 (c. 1592) · a demon on the road west · nicknamed 國丈 “The Royal Father-in-Law”
He came to a kingdom as an old man leading a beautiful girl, was made the king's father-in-law, and cured a headache of his own making with eleven hundred children's livers.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 78
A Boy in Every Goose Cage
鵝籠貯子Every door in the city kept a goose cage with a chosen boy in it; the emperor's physician had prescribed a remedy, the king wasted, and the whole town was raising livers for a medicine that would make him live a thousand years.
- ch. 78
The Cages Lifted in One Night
陰神抬籠Wukong requisitioned the city gods, the land-gods and every guardian spirit of the mission, and had eleven hundred and eleven cages carried out of the city in one night on a wind, so that the parents woke to empty doorsteps.
- ch. 79
A Heart Prescribed as Medicine
換心之說When the cages vanished the royal father-in-law proposed a better medicine: the heart of the Tang monk, a body ten lifetimes in cultivation and never yet leaking its essence, worth ten thousand years instead of a thousand.
- ch. 79
Heaps of Hearts on the Steps
剖腹獻心Wukong asked for a short ox-ear knife, opened his own belly on the palace steps and rolled out a heap of hearts — red, white and yellow, grudging, envious, calculating, ambitious, evil, dark — and the king's physician observed what a many-hearted monk this was.
- ch. 79
The Stolen Coiled-Dragon Staff
蟠龍拐The deer fought him twenty rounds with a nine-jointed coiled-dragon staff he had also stolen from his master, then took the form of a cold streak of light, went into the palace and came out carrying the queen.
- ch. 79
The Nine-Forked Poplar Door
楊樹根門The land-god of Willow Grove Slope had never heard of the village; the cave was under the roots of a nine-forked poplar on the south bank, and the door opened on three turns left, three turns right and both hands slapped against the tree.
- ch. 79
One Stroke, a Ball of Fur
狐作毛團Bajie killed the white-faced fox with one stroke of the rake, and the one who had laughed a thousand ways at a whole kingdom lay as a ball of fur; the deer smelled at the body and was slapped for asking why.
結局 The ending
The Star of Longevity comes down, covers the cold light and pleads for the beast as his own pair of feet; the deer reverts with seven-forked antlers, ears laid flat at its master's voice. The excuse is a game of chess with the East Flower Emperor that had not finished. The king learns he has been bowing to a stag, and the emperor's own cure is three dates the star had pocketed from that same tea.
The book itself: why the monkey was pinned, which translation — The 500 years · The translations · The 81 trials