more than “monkey meets demon, monkey fights demon, monkey defeats demon.” In his translations of the poetry, Richard conveys a sort of profundity within abstruseness which contributes to the particular charm of this translation. The last two chapters, the Shedding of the Mortal Body and The Mission Achieved, are the summary and real meaning of the whole book to Richard, which are very moving. The novel ends with a litany of the Names of the Buddha and in homage of all the other bodhisattvas and arhats of heaven.
The earlier stage versions of various stories in the book in local opera form were incorporated into the much more elaborate and elite Peking Opera repertoire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. These also made the Monkey the central character. The role of Monkey was played by many famous actors, included the father and son Yang Yuelou (1844-1889) and Yang Xiaolou (1878-1938); and later by Li Shaochun, Li Wanchun, and Ye Shenzhang. During the late 1930s and early 1940s The Monkey King was so popular in Beijing that it was performed in several theatres simultaneously. The image of the Monkey they created is now very famous: standing on one leg, the other crossed over his knee, his hand covering his eyes as he peers into the darkness looking for demons, his eyes twitching nervously, holding his staff, and of course his chatter and his acrobatics.
In 1964 the Monkey King story was transformed into two animated cartoons produced in China, both about the Monkey with no reference to the Monk. These cartoons, Monkey Causes Havoc in Heaven and Monkey Upsets the Peach Banquet, featured Monkey as a sort of Mickey Mouse figure modelled on the Peking Opera version. There have been many other cartoon versions of the Monkey King, but the popular consensus is that none have surpassed the 1964 animations. After the Cultural Revolution the most widespread depiction of the Monkey on the stage was Monkey Beats the White Bone Demon, a modern allegory on Deng Xiaoping outwitting Jiang Qing, the widow of Chairman Mao and one of the so-called Gang of Four.
Outside China, the most significant development in the Monkey myth came during the 1960s with the Japanese series Monkey Magic. This was truly weird, with a middle aged woman playing Buddha, and a beautiful young actress, Matsuko Natsume, playing the young monk. Thirty odd episodes were produced, with little reference to the original book. It was based on the original characters, of course, and brought out their characteristics very well: the monk with a mission, the restless, rebellious monkey, the easy going, gluttonous, lustful pig, and the mournful, pessimistic sand spirit. One of the many interpretations of the book is that the many arguments and disputes between these four are in fact an inner dialogue, as we all wrestle with the rebellious, restless, gluttonous, lustful, mournful, and pessimistic personal demons, all of which are somehow kept in check by the higher aspirations of the soul. Freud would have said something about id, ego, and super-ego. This can easily be read into the pseudo-mystical comments threaded through Monkey Magic. The dialogue was dubbed by the BBC in a faux Japanese accent. It became somewhat of a cult, and still has many adherents. A sad postscript is that Matsuko Natsume, who was twenty-one when the series was made, and whose character is constantly reflecting on the transitory nature of life, died of leukaemia at the age of twenty-seven.
Since then there have been musicals, children’s theatre versions, a full and serious version produced in China (which stays close to the original book), innumerable manga adaptations, video games, and a number of movies and TV series, mainly from Hong Kong. Each of these reflected the tastes of the day. If Richard’s translation reflects the general cultural milieu of the late nineteenth century, both in China and Victorian England, and if Waley’s translation reflects the taste of the urbane British reader of the thirties, we can say that the Japanese series reflects the good humored innocence of the 1960s and the various manga, TV, and film versions of the late twentieth century reflect the technology, and in many cases the taste for violence, of that time.
The latest adaptation is The Forbidden Kingdom, which comes at a time when Chinese gongfu movies have now become part of Western popular culture, thanks to the pioneering work of Bruce Lee; when Chinese movies of a mystical turn are well known because of A Touch of Zen and the like, and when traditional wuxia (knight errant) and gongfu (martial arts, with a touch of magic) stories like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon have made this aspect of Chinese culture well known in the West. Outside the Chinese cultural sphere, The Lord of the Rings was one of the most popular works of literature of the late twentieth century, and the movie version of the early twenty-first century made it part of the consciousness of the general movie fan, whether they had read the book or not. The idea of the quest through dangerous lands full of demons and ogres, of friendly and unfriendly kingdoms, of determination, fear, courage, and the rest has become a resonant theme in Western culture. It is almost as if the traditional interpretation of The Journey to the West is reflected in the mood of the early twentieth-first century, in a new idiom.
Timothy Richard was famous in his day, but has been more or less forgotten by the currents of history. His translation, made with such hopes, may never have had much of a circulation, and was superseded by that of Arthur Waley and more recently by the full translations of Jenner and Yu. In this re-edition of Richard’s translation, some of the shorter chapters have been omitted, and many of them have been linked together in what is more or less a coherent sequence of events. Some of the more far fetched translations and comments have been excised, but the general flavor of Richard’s translation remains more or less intact. We do not know the process by which Richard made his translation, but I strongly suspect a Chinese colleague read it to him, explaining and commenting along the way, and Richard took it down quickly in English, which he later revised. It cannot really be considered a translation in the modern sense of the word. Anthony Yu, in his preface to his full and scholarly translation of The Monkey King’s Amazing Adventures, comments, “Two early versions in English (Timothy Richard, A Mission to Heaven, 1913, and Helen M. Hayes, The Buddhist’s Pilgrim’s Progress, 1930) were no more than brief paraphrases and adaptations.” But few people have the time or energy to wade through 1340 pages, unless they are students of Chinese literature and use the translations as a crib to read the original.
Richard’s translation is much more than a brief paraphrase: it is a very readable version and is quite close to the original, though often in an abbreviated and summarised form. It has its quaint and quirky side, but that adds to its charm. It is an auspicious time to rescue it from oblivion and re-issue it for another lease of life. The passage of Xuanzang’s story has indeed gone through seventy-two transformations. It has acquired monkeys and pigs, has been reinterpreted in Peking Opera, in musicals, in movies, in manga, and most recently as a martial arts epic. Somewhere in this series lies the translation by Timothy Richard. Both Xuanzang and Richard would be amazed, but pleased, to see that the transformations continue while the essence remains.
Daniel Kane
Professor of Chinese at Macquarie
University, Sydney
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Monkey Gets Restless and Seeks Immortality
Chaos reigned ere order came,
Darkness wrapped the world around,
When at last Pangu appeared.
Light and bright he placed above,
Heavy things he ranged below.
Living creatures he called forth,
All things needed he supplied.
Creation’s wonders if you’d see,
Read this journey to the sky.
WE HAVE HEARD THAT THE AGE OF THE WORLD is 129,600 years for one kalpa, that these kalpas are divided into 12 periods, just as the day and night are divided into 12 Chinese hours, and each period is 10,800 years, or two half periods of 5,400 each. Speaking of the divisions in a day, there are twelve of 2 hours each, from midnight to midnight. But if we speak of the division of
