Summary
This is a story of a priest’s journey to India to collect
the Scriptures and take them back to China. He is
accompanied by three pilgrims and they face great
adversity on the way. It is overflowing with magic,
demons, gods, immortals, action and adventure.
Chapter 1: Monkey is born from a rock in the small
country of Ao-lai. When he grows up, the other monkeys
make him their king because of his bravery. Several
hundred years pass until one day the Monkey King
becomes worried about his mortality. He begins a long
journey to find the Immortals and learn the Way of Long
Life and the art of transforming himself into other things
and flying. When he returns again to his land, he has
many powers. He fights and beats the Destroying Demon,
who has been terrorising the other monkeys and attacks
a city, stealing the soldiers’ weapons so that the monkeys
can defend themselves. He then goes to see the Dragon
King to find a special weapon for himself. He receives a
cudgel, but asks for more things and the Dragon King
gets angry and complains to the Jade Emperor, who gives
Monkey a job in Heaven looking after some power-giving
apples. Monkey greedily eats many of the apples and the
Jade Emperor punishes him. Finally, the Great Buddha
arrives and buries Monkey under a mountain. Some years
later, the Goddess Kuan-yin agrees to look for a pilgrim
who is willing to take the Scriptures to China. She begins
her journey and meets two ugly creatures that have been
punished for crimes in heaven. She persuades them to help
her and calls them ‘Sandy priest’ and ‘Pigsy’. She then
turns a dragon into a white horse and tells Monkey to wait
under his mountain for the pilgrim with the Scriptures.
Chapter 2: Ch’en O, the new governor of Chiang-chou,
is killed and his wife kidnapped by a boatman called Liu.
Ch’en’s body is taken to the Dragon King, who brings
him back to life. Liu takes Mrs Ch’en to Chiang-chou
and pretends to be the new governor. There, Mrs Ch’en
has a baby. Afraid that Liu will harm him, she puts him
in a river tied to a piece of wood. The child is found by
the Holy Master, who years later makes him a priest and
calls him Hsüan Tsang. Tsang, hearing of the wrongs done
to his parents, goes to find his mother. She sends Tsang
with a letter to her father, the Emperor’s minister, and the
truth is revealed. Liu is killed by the Emperor’s army and
Ch’en returns from the world of the Dragon King. Tsang
is chosen as the holiest priest and is asked to go to India to
fetch the Scriptures. He takes the new name of Tripitaka
and sets off. On his journey, he finds the mountain where
Monkey is trapped. He frees Monkey, who promises to
protect him. When Monkey begins to behave badly, the
Goddess Kuan-yin gives Tripitaka a magic cap. Monkey
puts it on and when Tripitaka recites some magic words, it
causes Monkey pain. Monkey now has to obey him.
Chapter 3: Tripitaka and Monkey continue their
journey. They reach a river and a dragon appears and eats
Tripitaka’s horse. Monkey fights the dragon, but unable
to win, asks the Goddess Kuan-yin for help. She explains
that the dragon is there to help and transforms it into the horse it has just eaten. They go on until they come to a
farm. Here, an old man tells them that his daughter has
been held captive by a pig-like creature. Monkey promises
to fight the creature and rescue the girl. He does this, but
the creature escapes into its cave. The fight continues until
Monkey tells the creature that he is going with Tripitaka to
find the Scriptures. The creature, Pigsy, then tells Monkey
that the Goddess Kuan-yin had put him there to wait for
them. So Pigsy joins the pilgrims on their journey. Next,
they reach the River of Sands where Pigsy fights a creature
that comes up out of the water. The creature turns out to
be Sandy and with the help of the Goddess Kuan-yin, he
too becomes a priest and joins the pilgrims.
Chapter 4: One night Tripitaka dreams about a king.
The king tells him that he was tricked by a magician who
pushed him into hole and then took on his own form and
pretended to be the real king. The king asks Tripitaka to
tell this to his son. With the help of Monkey, he convinces
the king’s son of the real story and Pigsy recovers the real
king’s body from the hole. He is brought back to life and
restored to his kingdom. Next, the pilgrims come across a
city where the religion of Buddha has been destroyed and
the king is under the influence of three Taoist Immortals.
The pilgrims take part in a rain-making contest with the
Immortals. With the help of the rain-dragons, Monkey
and Tripitaka win and Buddhism becomes the religion of
the city again.
Chapter 5: The pilgrims arrive at a village where every
year two children are sacrificed to the Great King of
Magic. Monkey and Pigsy transform themselves into two
children and confront the Great King, but he escapes into
the river. Unhappy about what has happened, the Great
King freezes the river and when the pilgrims try to cross
it, the ice breaks and Tripitaka falls in. With the help of
the Goddess Kuan-yin, Tripitaka’s followers rescue him
and they cross the river on a turtle’s back. Eventually they
reach Buddha’s holy castle. They cross a river to get there
in a boat with no bottom. By doing this, Tripitaka loses
his earthly body and achieves the highest wisdom possible.
Buddha gives them some Scriptures to take back to China
and tells his messengers to get the pilgrims back in eight
days.
Chapter 6: The Goddess Kuan-yin hears the stories of the
eighty fights that the pilgrims had on the way to get the
Scriptures and decides they must have one more to reach
the holy number of eighty-one. The magic wind that was
carrying the pilgrims back to China therefore stops and
they fall to the ground. They meet the turtle again and it
begins to carry them across a great river. The turtle gets
angry, however, as Tripitaka hasn’t kept a promise he had
made and drops them in the water. The Scriptures get
wet and they have to dry them on a rock. They then visit
Mr Ch’en’s house again and eventually get back to the
city of Ch’ang-an and give the Scriptures to the Emperor,
who organises a banquet. Then they return to Buddha’s
Holy Mountain and Tripitaka and Monkey are made into
Buddhas, Pigsy is named the Keeper of the Holy Temple,
Sandy becomes the Golden-Bodied Soldier and the horse
is transformed into one of the eight Heavenly Dragons.
