Journey to the West

82

The Girl Seeks the Male

The Primal Deity Guards the Way

The story tells how Pig leapt down the mountainside and found a narrow path. After following it for nearly two miles he came across two she−monsters drawing water from a well. How did he know that they both were monsters? Each of them had on her head an extremely unfashionable hair−style held up by bamboo slivers that stood one foot two or three inches high.

"Evil monsters," Pig called, going up to them.

The two of them looked at each other and said. "What an outrageous monk. We don't know him and we've never had words with him. So why did he call us evil monsters?" In their fury the monsters raised the pole with which they were going to carry the water and struck at Pig's head.

After a few blows that he could not ward off as he was unarmed, the idiot rushed back up the mountain with his head covered by both hands shouting, "Brother! Go back! The monsters are vicious."

"What's so vicious about them?" Monkey asked.

"There were two evil spirits drawing water from the well in the hollow," said Pig, "and they hit me three or four times with their carrying−pole just because I spoke to them."

"What did you call them?" Monkey asked. "Evil monsters," Pig replied.

"You got off lightly then," laughed Monkey.

"I'm most obliged for your concern," replied Pig. "My head has swollen up where they hit it, and you tell me I've got off lightly."

"Soft words will get you anywhere on earth; act rough and you won't move a single step," replied Monkey. "As they're local fiends from round here and we're monks from far away you'd have had to be a bit polite even if you'd had fists growing all over your body. Do you think they should have hit me instead of you? You were the one who called them evil monsters. Courtesy first!"

"I never realized," said Pig.

"Living on human flesh in the mountains since childhood as you have," said Monkey, "can you recognize two kinds of tree?"

"I don't know," Pig said. "Which two trees?"

"The willow and the sandalwood," Monkey replied. "The willow has a very soft nature, so that craftsmen can carve it into holy images or make statues of the Tathagata out of it. It's gilded, painted, set with jewels, decorated with flowers, and many worshippers burn incense to it. It receives unbounded blessings. But the sandalwood is so hard that it's used as the pressing−beam in the oil−press with iron hoops round its head, and it's hit with iron hammers too. The only reason it suffers like this is because it's to hard."

"You should have told me all this before," said Pig, "then I wouldn't have been beaten." "Now go back and find out the truth," said Brother Monkey. "But if I go there again they'll recognize me," Pig replied. "Then turn into something else," said Monkey.

"But even if I do turn into something else, brother, how am I to question them?" asked Pig.

"When you look different go up to them and bow to them," Monkey replied. "See how old they are. If they're about the same age as us call them 'Miss,' and if they're a lot older call them 'Lady.'"

"What a terrible climb−down: why should we be treating them as our relations when they're strangers from this far away?" said Pig.

"That's not treating them as relations," replied Monkey. "Its just a way of getting the truth out of them. If they're the ones who've got our master we'll be able to act; and if it isn't them we won't lose any time before going to fight elsewhere."