Last updated: 01-30-2024
I’ve previously written an article describing The Story of How Tripitaka of the Great Tang Procures the Scriptures (Datang Sanzang qujing shihua, 大唐三藏取經詩話, c. late-13th-century), a seventeen chapter novelette that likely served as a prompt for oral storytellers. It is the oldest printed version of the Journey to the West (Xiyouji, 西遊記) story cycle. Here, I would like to present an English translation of this tale by Charles S. Wivell (1994).
Archive link:
The Story of How the Monk Tripitaka of the Great Country of T’ang Brought back the Sutras
Detail of Tripitaka and the Monkey Pilgrim from a late-Xixia Yulin Cave no. 3 mural (larger version). See here for more ancient depictions of Sun Wukong and his master.
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This has been posted for educational purposes. No malicious copyright infringement is intended. If you liked the digital version, please support the official release.
Update: 01-30-24
I was recently interested to learn that The Story was influenced by underworld journey narratives. This explains the often fantastical and seemingly unrelated events that happen throughout the disjointed narrative. Brose (2023) writes:
The Japanese scholar Chūbachi Masakazu (b. 1938) was the first to point out that the Kōzanji narratives mirror two closely related mythic archetypes. The first, derived from ancient Han Chinese traditions, is the journey of the dead to the netherworld. In many accounts of postmortem travels, spirit animals (including but not limited to monkeys) serve as the guides for the dead on their passage through the spirit realm, whether the final destination is the Yellow Springs beneath the earth or Mount Kunlun in the distant west. The other motif, emerging from early Indian Buddhist literature, is the transmigration of the spirit to the Pure Land, which, like Mount Kunlun, was conventionally located somewhere in the west. In Buddhist accounts, animals (again, often but not always monkeys) also serve as escorts for the dead. Chubachi proposed that these narrative traditions—culturally distinct but thematically and functionally similar— were fused together with the historical account of Xuanzang’s journey to India. The Kōzanji texts, according to this reading, represent a complex but organic blending of initially independent narratives. The broad contours of Xuanzang’s biography and travelogue were superimposed onto older mythic accounts to provide a new, quasi-historical frame for age-old stories about the transmigrations of the dead.
Viewed from this perspective, Xuanzang was not passing through Central Asia en route to India but, instead, was traversing a hellish purgatory to reach a heavenly pure land. Like a shaman, he departs the human world and enters a dangerous liminal zone. Beset by ghosts and demons, he is guided and protected by powerful spirit animals and Buddhist deities. After enduring extreme hardship, he eventually arrives in an immortal realm populated by spirit monks, immortals, bodhisattvas, and buddhas. From Śākyamuni Buddha, he receives a collection of apotropaic texts with the power to safeguard the living and liberate the dead. Xuanzang then transmits these sacred scriptures back to the human realm before he and his assistants ascend to heaven during the annual ritual for liberating the damned from purgatory. This narrative not only maps the landscape of a postmortem shadow world, it also identifies the scriptures that guard against demonic molestation and ensure a propitious rebirth: the Buddhist canon in general and the Heart Sūtra in particular. Those who read, recited, or heard the Kōzanji texts were thus informed of the perils of purgatory and offered the promise of protection and salvation. Xuanzang, they also learned, was the saintly monk responsible for delivering these divine texts and technologies into the hands of humans (pp. 62-63).
This strengthens my suggestion that the Monkey Pilgrim serves as a stand-in for Mulian (目連; Sk: Maudgalyayana). This Buddhist saint is famous for traversing the underworld to save his mother.
Regarding the date of The Story, I’ve previously mentioned that it is a product of the late-13th-century. But Zhang (1990) assigns an earlier date to its writing, stating this was likely no earlier than the reign of Emperor Renzong (r. 1022-1063) of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) and no later than the reign of Emperor Gaozong (r. 1127-1129) of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). This places The Story in the late-Northern Song. Zhang ends by saying,
Even though the current version of “Zhongwazi Zhangjiayin” [1] was printed in the late-Southern Song Dynasty, the date of publication should not be confused with the year in which the book was written.
纵然今见“中瓦子张家印”本刊印于南宋晚期，亦不能把刊印时间与成书年代混为一谈。
Chen (2014) supports a Song publication with evidence comparing The Story‘s rhyming system with that of Buddhist “Transformation Texts” (Bianwen, 變文). I have attached a PDF below.
PDF File:
Note:
1) The original late-13th-century manuscript of The Story is stamped with the “Zhang Family Seal of Central Market District” (Zhongwazi Zhangjiayin, 中瓦子張家印). The Central Market District (Zhongwazi, 中瓦子) was a street known for play promotions and book publishers in Song-era Lin’an prefecture (Zhang, 1990). This appears to be another nickname for The Story apart from the “Kozanji version” (Dudbridge, 1970, p. 25, for example).
Citation:
Brose, B. (2023). Embodying Xuanzang: The Postmortem Travels of a Buddhist Pilgrim. United States: University of Hawaii Press.
Chen, Y. (2014). Datang Sanzang qujing shihua shidaixing zaiyi: Yi yunwen tizhi de kaocha wei zhongxin [Another Discussion on the Age of the Story of How Tripitaka of the Great Tang Procured the Scriptures: An Investigation into the Rhyming System], Pudan Journal (Social Sciences), 5, 69-80.
Dudbridge, G. (1970). The Hsi-yu chi: A Study of Antecedents to the Sixteenth-Century Chinese Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wivell, C.S. (1994). The Story of How the Monk Tripitaka of the Great Country of T’ang Brought Back the Sūtras. In V. Mair (Ed.), The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (pp. 1181-1207). New York: Columbia University Press.
Zhang, J. (1990). Datang Sanzang qujing shihua chengshu niandai kaolun [A Discussion of the Date of the Story of How Tripitaka of the Great Tang Procures the Scriptures]. Xueshu jiaoliu, 4, 108-114. Retrieved from https://www.toutiao.com/article/7065749209709806087/?wid=1706529284309