Chinese Literature

白象精獅駝洞二大王 · 50

Leaf 50 of the pilgrimage · 二大王 Second King of the Three

White Elephant Spirit 白象精

In Journey to the West 西遊記 (c. 1592) · a demon on the road west · nicknamed 二大王 “Second King of the Three”

The terror of the ridge, never once beaten in a straight fight, is undone by a suggestion from Bajie, who is standing on the side of the hill watching and not helping.

Lair
the same cave on Lion-Camel Ridge; three zhang tall, yellow-tusked, fighting with a long spear
Magic
a trunk that coils up anything, iron-backed or copper-bodied — and nothing else at all
Collected by
Samantabhadra of Mount E, who rides him home on the same kind of lotus seat

The great deeds 大事記

  1. ch. 74

    One Coil of the Trunk

    鼻捲人

    The patrol's second report: the second king lies in wait with nothing but his nose; one coil and a man of iron back and copper body loses his soul, and his own shape is three zhang of yellow tusk and silkworm brows.

  2. ch. 76

    The Trunk Loop at the Waist

    捲住腰胯

    He took Wukong up in the trunk and got the waist but not the hands, so the monkey stood there in the loop of that nose juggling a shrunken staff and complaining about his luck, while Bajie watched from the spur of the hill.

  3. ch. 76

    The Staff Up a Nostril

    搠入鼻孔

    Bajie supplied the idea: shrink the staff to egg-thickness and put it up the nostril. The elephant let go at once, and Wukong came away with the trunk in his fist and pulled him down the slope.

  4. ch. 76

    Two Grooms for an Elephant

    兩個象奴

    Bajie followed tapping the beast's haunches with the flat of the rake while Wukong led the trunk, and the monk, watching from below, asked Sha what it was that his eldest disciple was dragging.

  5. ch. 76

    The Litter Promised in Grunts

    嗚嗚應承

    With his nose stretched shut the elephant could only answer in grunts; he knelt and promised a carrying-litter for the monk, and let go of the ridge on the strength of a mercy nobody in the cave had any intention of keeping.

  6. ch. 77

    Spear Down Before the Bodhisattvas

    皈蓮臺

    He threw down his spear at the same moment as his brother, when Samantabhadra and Manjusri came up out of the Buddha's retinue and said the words over them.

結局 The ending

He goes back to Mount E as a saddle-beast, and the novel does not pretend the mercy was earned: he was spared because the monk told his disciples not to break the creature's skin, having watched two men lead a demon down a hill like a temple elephant. By the time the third king falls, the ridge's forty-eight thousand demons have already fled an empty city that a bird ate five hundred years ago.

In the same episode 同難

The book itself: why the monkey was pinned, which translation — The 500 years · The translations · The 81 trials