Beyond the Question of the Monkey Imposter: Indian Influence on the Chinese Novel, The Journey to the West
by Ramnath Subbaraman
The Chinese Ming period (1368-1644) novel the Hsi-yu Chi, or The Journey to the West, relates the exploits of the monk Hsuan-tsang during a pilgrimage to India to obtain Buddhist scriptures. Throughout the hundred-chapter narrative, Hsuan-tsang's character is constantly overshadowed by the four animal disciples who accompany him on his journey, especially his superhuman monkey disciple Sun Wu-k'ung. These pilgrims are preordained to obtain the scriptures only after facing eighty-one ordeals, represented by a series of monsters that must be vanquished by the group. In these episodes of conflict, the monkey disciple inevitably plays the lead role in subjugating the demons through his strength, guile, and cunning.
In one such episode, Sun Wu-k'ung, having been temporarily rejected from the group of pilgrims seeking the scriptures, returns to his home at the Flower-Fruit Mountain to find that his position has been usurped by an imposter. No ordinary charlatan, this fake monkey so resembles Sun Wu-k'ung that, try as they may, observers "[can] not distinguish the true one from the false" (3: 118). Similar in facial features and strength, the two monkeys also simultaneously repeat each other's phrases, claiming that the other is the fake.
After Sun Wu-k'ung's traveling companions, the Jade Emperor, and even the Bodhisattva Kuan-yin all fail to differentiate between the two monkeys, the paradox is brought before the Buddha himself. When the Buddha solves the dispute by correctly identifying the false monkey, an indignant Sun Wu-k'ung immediately strikes the imposter dead despite the Buddha's pleas (3: 118-132). For the "Monkey of the Mind," there could only be one true monkey; to allow more would lead to the fundamental problem for which the incident is a metaphor: "If one has two minds, disasters he'll breed;/ He'll guess and conjecture both far and near" (3: 128).
This episode can perhaps serve equally as well as a metaphor for the "regrettably acrimonious dispute" (Mair 660) that has surrounded the issue of the character Sun Wu-k'ung's historical origins. Not only does the debate circulate around two similar monkeys, but the scholarly community is also of two minds on this issue. Hu Shih's original suggestion that the character "is not a native product, but rather is an import from India" (cited in Mair 705) stimulated a controversy that has generally focused on whether Sun Wu-k'ung is of "indigenous" creation or simply a copy of the monkey Hanuman, a prominent character in the Indian epic the Ramayana. The issue has generally been construed in this highly polarized manner; Glen Dudbridge, for instance, interprets the claim of scholars supporting the possibility of Indian influence as being "quite simply, that Sun Wu-k'ung derives ultimately from Hanumat" (160). With one set of scholars claiming the "foreign" derivation of Sun Wu-k'ung and others denying any possible connection between The Journey to the West and Indian literature, the debate seems to boil down to one question: which monkey is the imposter?
Of course, the issue cannot and should not be reduced to such a simple question. This paper attempts to widen this debate by illuminating some of the remarkable plot similarities between The Journey to the West and the Indian epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It does not examine the possibility of textual and oral transmission of Indian stories to China, an issue that has been extensively discussed elsewhere (see, for example, Dudbridge, Mair, and Walker). While most other analyses explore connections between particular images and characteristics, few examine the more extended plot parallels. Moreover, most other arguments focus solely on the similarities between the two monkeys Hanuman and Sun Wu-k'ung. The narrow scope of simply examining whether the first served as the "source" for the second misses a more general, and perhaps more significant, issue, namely the type of influence the Indian body of literature has had on a particular Chinese novel. Though this paper obviously focuses on the detailed similarities between texts, it does so keeping in mind this larger picture.
In light of this larger picture, this analysis includes comparisons not only between Hanuman and Sun Wu-k'ung but also between other characters, as well as particular aspects of plot and setting. Also, in addition to the Valmiki Ramayana, the Mahabharata (Poona critical edition) serves as a primary text for comparison to The Journey to the West. Both Indian texts are used not only to bring to prominence plot parallels between the Mahabharata and the Chinese novel that have previously been overlooked (possibly because the debate has focused so heavily on the two monkey characters) but also to emphasize the idea that the possibility of an Indian influence on The Journey to the West cannot be understood by examining a single text alone. The concern here is not simply textual transmission but also cultural transmission; in this spirit, these particular versions of the Indian epics have not been chosen because of the assumption that they have some sort of primordial Ur-status. A.K. Ramanujan has written extensively on the multiplicity of Ramayanas, and he notes that "it is not always Valmiki ' s narrative that is carried from one language to another" (134). The Valmiki Ramayana and the Poona critical edition of the Mahabharata are rather used for their general comprehensiveness and, in this manner, serve to represent a wider spectrum of possible "tellings" of both epics (Ramanujan 134).
The first part of this paper revisits the debate surrounding Sun Wu-k'ung and Hanuman by offering new similarities and taking a closer look at previous connections. Next, an in-depth comparison between one episode of the Mahabharata and another from the Journey to the West illustrates the possibility of influence from multiple Indian texts on the Chinese novel. Finally, parallels between an episode of The Journey to the West and the Ramayana show that comparisons between the two texts should not simply be limited to the two monkey characters, but should be expanded to other characters, settings, extended plot lines, and even thematic organization. The use of these examples will hopefully illuminate the many ways Indian literature may have influenced the Chinese novel The Journey to the West without portraying the novel as a foreign "imposter."