#jttw friar sand

[immaturescribbles]

The Red Boy fight is something else

One of the first times on this journey where Wukong gets his ass kicked.

Side note, his brothers care about him and heal him with massages and their magic hands in the book, and it's wholesome.

[gojospee]

Wukong being in a decapitation contest and being excited for it is crazy😭 he even said “it was fun”

I like whenever we see different sides of Wukong, such as being anxious whenever his severed head didn’t come back to his body, which caused him to grow another head lol.

Wukong then acting like he didn’t almost die and shows off to an astonished Bajie that he doesn’t even have a scar from the sword 😭💀

[journeytothewestresearch]

Sizes of the JTTW Pilgrims

Someone posted the following picture to a Monkey King-related Facebook group that I belong to. The bottom part reads:

"The original novel describes Bajie's body as being one zhang tall. Three Chinese feet is 1 meter. One zhang is around 3.3 meters. Sha Monk is 1.2 zhang, which is close to 4 meters. The Tang monk is 1.8 meters. The Great Sage Lord is 4 Chinese feet, or approximately 1.3 meters."

Edit: I've written an article about the picture.

[what-yadoking-likes]

YES. JOURNEY TO THE WEST IS INCREDIBLE.

I got a 4-volume set one year for my partner’s birthday, and we read it together - by that I mean, we used to voice act it together. Publicly. We have so many in-jokes and references that come from Wu Cheng’en being genuinely so fucking funny.

“I’ve travelled every corner of this earth! There’s nothing I haven’t seen!” “Have you seen a Manfruit?” “No, I haven’t!!”

*Wukong killing the 6-eared macaque so hard he extincts the species* And that is why you never see any 6-eared macaques.

*Wukong erasing names of all macaques from the Book of Death in the underworld/afterlife*

There is a poem to prove it that goes...

WICKED APE

‘Protector of Horses’ lol

The several incidences with piss

The several incidences where Sanzang gets monknapped and must be rescued by his knight in shining armour, Wukong (dragging a reluctant Pig and Friar Sand along with him)

The Little Junior Devils

“As they say - why bother two hosts when you can only bother one?... As they say - why make two trips when one is sufficient? As they say... give me the cudgel”

*Wukong making the word ‘stone’ illegal*

*Whenever Taoists are involved you can bet £100 they’re that chapter’s bad guys and you’d be right 99% of the time*

I appreciate approximately none of that will make any sense if you haven’t read it but TRUST. It is legitimately awesome, and I still want a t-shirt that says ‘Protector of Horses’ in very fancy writing and calligraphy.

kills me that "every single classic out there is written by white people" is such a common take. are the literary traditions of other countries a fucking joke to you? come on. go read the journey to the west or something I beg

[sketching-shark]

If you were put in charge of making a JTTW movie/TV adaption from start to finish what direction would you have the show go?

*SHAKING AND FROTHING AT THE MOUTH FROM THE THOUGHT OF BEING IN CHARGE OF MY OWN ULTRAVIOLENT BODY HORROR-ESQUE JTTW ADAPTATION* Oh I am so normal about this prospect anon.

But in all seriousness I think I would DEFINITELY want it to be a lengthy animated tv adaptation because there's so much rich backstory and plot in the og classic that a movie length doesn't really let you delve into, AND because the wild transformations and different entities seem like they would be best conveyed in the limitless possibilities of animation! Like just imagine how terrifying a havoc in heaven would be where the Monkey King is shown taking FULL advantage of every single one of his abilities (as-you-will cudgel size transformation, tons of monkey clones, transformation from one creature to another, invulnerability, truth-seeing eyes, transformation into a three-headed six-armed towering monstrosity to fight an Erlang Shen who does the same, etc.). In addition, I also do think that the length of time it took for the pilgrims to warm up to each other and for Sun Wukong to go from a practical and ruthless yaoguai warlord to the Buddha Victorious in Strife is an important part of what makes Xiyouji the classic that it is, and this is all something that I think could be well captured in a lengthy animated series.

I know for sure that I'd want to spend a good amount of time on Sun Wukong's transformation from a relatively innocent stone monkey to the most viciously powerful of the yaoguai warlords to a sincere Buddhist, especially since the very understandable fear of death for himself and his loved ones seems to constantly be a driving force behind a lot of his actions. I think seeing the transformation of the monkey from loving and wanting to protect a relatively small group of people (47,000 monkeys & his friends) to extending that active love and compassion to individuals of all sorts, both human and yao, could be a really cool arc for the Monkey King too. This is especially so as it raises the interesting question as to whether compassion and love can end up being destructive if it's only offered to some but not others, and what atonement for past violence might be.

Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing also present a potentially fascinating case of dealing with disgraced deities who start off by considering their time on Earth and time on the journey a punishment before they eventually come to develop genuine compassion for the mortals they encounter. Stories about a fall from heaven leading to the fallen ones developing greater empathy for those who were once literally below them is my jam, and I think these other two pilgrims could offer a neat way to explore that! Also I want to note that I'm fully on team "Zhu Bajie is constantly complaining that he's hungry and tired first because of his own appetites and then as a way to get the other four self-destructive idiots to stop and take care of the basic necessities of life." For sure I'd also add in that potential hint noted by others that breaking a vase during a banquet had a precedent of being used as a signal to start a coup, thus explaining why Sha Wujing's punishment on Earth was much worse than Zhu Bajie's. And one simply can't do without the indication that it was everyone's favorite Friar Sand who had eaten eight of Tang Sanzang's reincarnations! He may be one of the pilgrim group's straight men, but he also spent centuries as a cannibal <3.

Also yeah hard agree with others that both Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing start off the pilgrimage pretty terrified of Sun Wukong because they saw him at his violently worst in heaven. As a treat :3

I think I'd also have Ao Lie spend more time outside of his horse not just so that he can be a dragon-ish guy as well as an actual dragon, but also so that we can get more insight into how his transformation from a destructive prince to a humble steed changed him. I think it also would be cool to spend a little more time on the dragon kings and how, for example, it does raise some uncomfortable questions about their whole deal if Ao Lie could commit arson & destroy a pearl and be punished pretty brutally while Ao Guang could run a weather-based protection racket for centuries and get a 12 year old to kill himself and yet they all seem to be cool with that :[

I'd also want to make my adaptation one that deals more with the aftereffects of the absolute bullshit the pilgrims go through. For example, it's pretty rare to find an adaptation out there that gives full weight to the stuff Tang Sanzang went through, and while it is understandable why and can be funny to characterize him as one of the "straight men" of the pilgrim group or as the weepy useless guy who falls off his dragon horse all the time, I've literally never encountered an adaptation that for example has him react at the age of 18 to his mother committing suicide after Xuanzang went through so much to try and help her, or him having to see both of the human companions he started the journey with get eaten alive by yaoguai. I'd want to make Tang Sanzang more of a dynamic character than he is even in Xiyouji itself, and I do think delving into this background--you knowing, showing why exactly he does in fact have good reason to be suspicious and even hateful of yaoguai and perhaps more secretly certain humans (his mother was after all brutalized for years by a bandit chief)--would be good to deal with in showing Tang Sanzang's journey to enlightenment. And for sure I'd want to make Tang Sanzang a little more like the historical Xuanzang in having him both be a master translator and a canny rule-breaker; I think that having the story follow history in that Xuanzang was in fact forbidden from going west in search of Buddhist scriptures but went anyway, for example, would be a good path to follow. Might give him an interesting point of relation and sympathy to SWK as well, in that both of them would be challenging authority to do what they think is right.

I do think that this all could also make for a really interesting point of tension and later comprehension between Tang Sanzang and SWK, where you would have the monk and the monkey on the same journey for very different but in some ways similar reasons (Tang Sanzang wants the scriptures because he sincerely believes that they will save countless souls, SWK wants to finish the journey so that he can go back home and protect his monkeys). Like Tang Sanzang would be starting the journey at age 28 and after going through some pretty intense trauma, but having lived in a monastery for most of his life wouldn't have much of a sense of what dangers the world contains as SWK, even though he is determined to complete the journey no matter the cost to himself. SWK, on the other hand, would be starting the journey after the bitter defeat in heaven and the anguish of 500 years in solitary confinement, and would likely be enraged about everything he lost but would still be operating under the terrible elation that came from his vast violent power. As someone else once put it, it could be a similar dynamic to a late middle-aged triads boss having to watch out for a beginning grad student lmao. So you'd have a lot of tension between SWK and Tang Sanzang's world views, with the former thinking that violence is a perfectly acceptable way to solve problems or get what you want, while the other abhors violence of all sorts, and they'd both have plentiful reasons to criticize the other.

While the film The Monkey King 2 is far from the best JTTW retelling out there (though it is one of my personal favorites lol), it also has this pretty great and rare scene for JTTW retellings that I feel I'd like my own retelling to somewhat emulate. Here, Sun Wukong saves Tang Sanzang and a bunch of little kids from the violent actions of a king, but he's only able to do this because the Monkey King is more powerful than the king and is able to legitimately threaten the king with death if he goes back to his vicious ways. Tang Sanzang does get Sun Wukong to spare the king, but the king then directly calls the monk out on the seeming hypocrisy of his mission. I forget the exact words, but the king's accusations were basically about how Tang Sanzang is a fraud and a liar because for all that he preaches peace and forgiveness he wouldn't be able to make it anywhere, he wouldn't be able to save anyone, he would have in fact been killed long ago if it wasn't for Sun Wukong's power and willingness to violence. And I do think in a lot of ways this is the crux of a lot of interesting questions that Xiyouji brings up even if it never provides one solid answer: that we all want to be relieved of suffering, and yet what do we do in a world where violence is something we both constantly suffer from as well as commonly inflict upon others?

I guess ultimately I'd want this to be a retelling that really focuses on the many forms and roles of violence in the shaping of a society, what the consequences of this violence often is, and what might be done to create a more just and peaceful life for all.

I'd know I'd want to spend a lot of time on SWK getting back home to Mt. Huaguoshan and finding it this burned-out ruin with the vast majority of his family dead or otherwise gone, only to realize that this was done by heaven in retaliation for the war and his havoc in heaven in a true case of mythological M.A.D. I feel like this, as with other scenes, would be a good way to bring up Xiyouji's frequent refrain that "for the strong there's always the stronger," and how the devastation that violence and warfare wrecks on a landscape, even if it seems awesome and justifiable at the time it's being waged, leads to horrific problems that don't go away even after generations and which could very easily be turned against you and your loved ones. I've said before that one of the things that I like about the Monkey King is that he almost always has a very clear reason for doing what he does, and I think this would be a great arc for it to really and painfully hit home that ultimately violence does not exist in a vacuum, and, especially when you care about so many, it ultimately serves to create a world where your own loved ones can easily become the next who will suffer. Yet even here the complexity of the situation doesn't stop, because while SWK is able to vastly improve the lives of his monkeys by doing everything he can to restore Mt. Huaguoshan back to its former fecundity, he also protects them by well killing 1000 human hunters who had been going after them for years. The violence may never stop, but neither do the efforts to make the world a more peaceful place. And as it is, no one can live by the sword alone.

Just some sketchy thoughts anon, but I hope you like what I'm laying out :)

[chernobog13]

A Journey to the West art book I picked up many years ago at a bookstore in L.A.’s Chinatown.  Whenever I had the time I would browse the stacks looking for anything Monkey King related.

The book contains wonderful line drawings of almost every major character from the novel.  The artist is Li Yunzhong,

Here is his depiction of Tang Monk, aka Tang Sanzang, aka Tripitaka.  I apologize for the bleed-through in the image.  The paper in this book is thin pulp, even thinner than old-timey comic books and pulp magazines, and it���s printed on both sides, so the “back” image shows through.  I suppose if I got really enterprising I would scan these images into Photoshop and clean them up, but I got exhausted just thinking about that.

Here’s the real star of JTTW, Monkey King aka Sun Wukong.  This design of him very much resembles how he appears in the Shaw Brothers’ film series.  I like how the artist has made Monkey King’s kilt a tiger skin, as it is in the novel.  The kilt he wears in the films has more of a leopard pattern.

Here’s our ladies’ man of the group, Pigsy aka Zhu Bajie.  Very much the comedy relief of our intrepid troupe.  I’m kinda glad the artist drew him wearing a shirt under his open robe.

And then we have Sandy, aka Sha Wujing, aka Friar Sand.  Where as Monkey King and Pigsy are always either getting into or causing trouble, Sandy does his best to be the “good kid” of the group; the one exasperated parent Tang monk never has to worry about.

[melonmass]

Oh, I have a JTTW AU for you! Behold! Elemental AU! Where everyone controls one of the Five Elements (and the dragon horse’s water control is redundant)! Wukong is metal/fire (not sure about it), Tripitaka is Plant, Bajie is fire/metal (see before) and Sandy has earth! Hilarity ensues!

Alright. So I've seen a few people compare the gang to the five elements before. Wukong and Longma seem to be consistently fire and water respectively, while the rest seem to vary a bit.

Now, full on Elemental AU, there's fun in that.

So I'm guessing Wukong is like almost completely fire and smoke, but still, like, solid?? I mean, monkeys like there physical affection, so I don't think it'd be totally impossible for him to be touched.

So, either he became a fire elemental after being FRICKIN COOKED ALIVE FOR 48 DAYS. Or maybe he was one the moment he exploded from that rock. Like, the rock had a molten core or something.

(omg lava monkey)

Now, Longma I think, as a horse, would look kinda like the water spirit from Frozen 2. Ya know, the water horse thing in the trailer.

(here's where I accidentally posted before I was done.)

Plant Monk. PLANT MONK. YA CAN'T SAY THAT WITHOUT ME IMAGINING MEDITATING SANZANG COVERED IN FLOWERS!!!

He's also probs still human looking. Like, he was the only human in this gang of demons in the book. Maybe the big deal is that he looks so dang human for an Elemental.

I don't have much for a Metal Bajie. Like, he could be a robot or a shiny dude or something.

Wujing now. Him as Earth/Mud. The Friar Sand name is now a bit more fitting. Like, he not only emerged from the river, but STRAIGHT FROM THE MUD OF THE RIVERBED/RIVERBANK. HE COMES OUT LOOKING LIKE THE SWAMP THING.

There's also more to group dynamics based the cycle of, like, strength and weaknesses with the five elements.

Example:

Wood strengths Fire, so here that would be Sanzang helping Wukong be a better person, or his being captured switching Wukong into rescue murder mode.

Fire weakens/restricts Metal. Wukong can beat Bajie in a fight, obviously. Also probably the only thing at least decent at keeping Bajie from overeating and chasing after girls.

Also I'm gonna just keep my tag Happy AU Year for AU talk because I have more AUs and it makes it easier to find all the AU talk on my blog.

[gojospee]

The way Sanzang speaks to Wukong sometimes kills me lol. Yet even tho he insults Wukong he still ends up listening to his advice🥹

I think it’s cute how Wukong decided that instead of sleeping (after being awake all night💀) he amuses himself by hopping around the trees😂

Also can we take some time to appreciate Friar sand??? He’s so forgotten 🥲 he’s just a chill guy who usually keeps to himself

[gojospee]

Wukong, Bajie, and Friar Sand all share one brain cell and it’s very evident in this moment of the story 😭

The Taoist monks asked for holy water and Wukong had the grand idea of filling the jars with urine instead T_T

“Stinking piss” “sound was like that of a torrent” I CANT WITH THE DETAILS😂💀

Then they have the audacity to straighten themselves, act all professional, and tell the monks to come get the “holy water.”😩

I didn’t include the rest but just know the elder Taoist monks ended up drinking the piss and even smacked their lips to taste it better….

(Mind you, all 3 of them did this while Sanzang was sleeping)

[gojospee]

Friar Sand and Bajie caring for dead Wukong is so endearing to me 🫠🥹 Bajie is usually getting Wukong in trouble or badmouthing him so seeing him bring Wukong back to life lets me know that they truly do have a sincere brotherhood.

Let’s not forget Friar Sand, he’s always been quite respectful and nice to Wukong ;) Friar crying for Wukong is so on brand for him and shows he does have a compassionate soul.

I just felt the need to upload this to show that all three disciples really do care for each other even though they have been through a lot together lol💜

[journeytothewestresearch]

Is there an English translation of JttW that you consider definitive, or just personally recommend over others? Sorry if you've been asked this a million times!

See my previous answer.

I have numerous foreign language translations of the novel available here.

[journeytothewestresearch]

Hi! You seem to be the JTTW expert and I was wondering if you could clarify something for me; If I understand correctly, Wujing ate 9 of Tripitaka’s previous incarnations, right? If so, shouldn’t he be super-powered by all of them? After all, the reason the demons want to eat him is because Tripitaka cultivated power in his previous lives, which will give them immortality and power. Didn’t that apply to the previous monks?

The 13th-century oral JTTW openly states that Sha Wujing's antecedent has continually eaten Tripitaka:

Deep Sand said: "I am the one who devoured you twice before, monk. Slung from my neck are all your dry bones!" (Wivell, 1994, p. 1190). 深沙云：「項下是和尚兩度被我吃你，袋得枯骨在此。」

And since Tripitaka is the tenth reincarnation of Master Golden Cicada and Sha claims to have eaten nine previous scripture pilgrims (Wu & Yu, 2012, vol. 1, p. 210), it's reasonable to assume that Sha has eaten the monk's past nine lives. However, to my knowledge, JTTW never openly states that the Buddhist master had made previous attempts in his past lives to travel to India, or that he had been eaten by Sha in the process (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).

It's important to remember that Tripitaka, better known as Xuanzang (玄奘, 602-664), is not the only Chinese monk who has traveled to India for scriptures. Another famous scripture pilgrim is Faxian (法顯, 337- c. 422). So, the novel could be referring to other such monks.

But if we were to view the aforementioned nine monks as Tripitaka's past lives, I think the reason why Sha Wujing isn't empowered by their flesh is because their compounding life-long austerities only results in the tenth and final reincarnation being holy.

Fun Fact: The "Deep Sands" demon mentioned above is actually a vilified version of a spirit said to have originally helped Xuanzang in his 7th-century biography. This figure came to be worshiped as Jinja Taishō (深沙大將, “General of the Deep Sands”), a minor protector deity in Japanese Buddhism. One 11th-century Japanese source claims that the General manifested before Faxian in a wrathful form. Most importantly, the skulls around his neck are said to be those of demons, not monks (Dudbridge, 1970, p. 20)!

A 13th to 14th-century Japanese Kamakura carving of the General of the Deep Sands.

Sources:

Dudbridge, G. (1970). The Hsi-yu chi: A Study of Antecedents to the Sixteenth-Century Chinese Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. 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.

Wu, C., & Yu, A. C. (2012). The Journey to the West (Vols. 1-4) (Rev. ed.). Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

[journeytothewestresearch]

The Monkey King's religious given name may have been borrowed from the historical Tuoba monk Wukong (悟空, born 車奉朝, 731-812). And to my knowledge, the full name “Sun Wukong” (孫悟空) appeared as early as the early-Ming JTTW zaju play.

Zhu and Sha also appear in this play, but the former is never called "Wuneng" (悟能), and the latter is never called "Wujing" (悟净). Instead, they are called "Zhu Bajie" (豬八戒) and "Sha heshang" (沙和尚), respectively.

This suggests that the names Wuneng and Wujing were later additions to the story cycle. My educated guess as to why they all have Wu (悟) in their names is that it was done for the sake of symmetry.

There are other examples of symmetry in the novel. For example, the demon kings of the 72 caves match the 72 heavenly commanders. Also, the Bull Demon King's arc is quite similar to that of Monkey. [1]

It's also important to note that Wu (悟) is “one of the common Chinese translations for the Sanskrit term bodhi (awakening)” (Buswell & Lopez, 2014, p. 998). This foreshadows the disciples' eventual enlightenment at the end of novel.

Edit:

The Shaolin Temple uses a poem to name the various disciple cohorts. All disciples in the same cohort have the same generational dharma name (similar to Master Subodhi's students). [2] Lu (2019) explains:

I'm not sure how prevalent this is in other Buddhist institutions, though.

But perhaps the novel is a mix of what Monkey Ruler and I have suggested. As I show above, "Wukong" predates the 1592 JTTW. Guanyin borrowing Wu to name the religious brothers' disciple cohort would not only be symmetrical but follow historical naming conventions.

Note:

He’s an iron staff-wielding demon king nicknamed the “Great Sage,” who knows 72 changes, can adopt a titanic form, takes part in a battle of transformations with an enemy, is trapped by a joint effort from heaven and incapacitated by a circular object, and finally faces the Buddha.

Subodhi's school has 12 generational names used to name students:

1) Guang (廣) 2) Da (大) 3) Zhi (智) 4) Hui (慧) 5) Zhen (真) 6) Ru (如) 7) Xing (性) 8) Hai (海) 9) Ying (穎) 10) Wu (悟) 11) Yuan (圓) 12) Jue (覺) (Wu & Yu, 2012, vol. 1, p. 115).

Source:

Buswell, R. E., & Lopez, D. S. (2014). The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Lu, Z. (2019). A History of Shaolin: Buddhism, Kung Fu and Identity. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis.

Is there a tradition that explains why all 3 disciples have religious names that start with Wù?

I'm actually not too sure myself in details but what I can tell you that when it comes to religious names whether that be for Taoism or Buddhism it was a practice to get a name for while you are a disciple or even continue with the faith. Usually you keep your surname and have a new given name with the first character being the generation of disciples you are training with, showing that you are all of the same “class” so to speak. These are what are considered your ‘sisters’ or ‘brothers’ in cultivation. And the second character is that of another given character to make each name unique. I can’t say for sure how this process goes as from most of my religious studies this tradition is rarely touched on and I could be missing information about this practice due to that.

Religious names are more to represent the sect that one has entered. Wukong got his religious name when he entered Putis school and he was given his name from the listings of characters provided. This would make it so that there are many other dispels alongside Wukong that have the 悟 character as well in their name. But he has also listed the other sect names that each generation in his school has gone through as well.

My best guess is that GuanYin actually had it that Bajie and Wujing would share their names with Wukong. She always planned to have it that Wukong would join the journey but made sure that Wujing and Bajie would be considered Wukongs fellow disciples because of their shared name. Which I find it very sweet that she could have thought about having Bajie and Wujing follow Wukong's lead in order to show they are a team untie together.

[journeytothewestresearch]

so it’s a bit of a weird question but I don't really understand “sha wujing” punishment, like do heaven really sends down flying swords to stab him every 7 days because he broke some crystal cup? I’m pretty sure there is more to it that I don’t know, that’s why I came to ask you

That's all the novel says as far as I know. My guess is that the weekly sword punishment is related to a broader category of reoccurring torture from world myth. The first example that comes to mind is the fate of the Titan Prometheus:

And ready-witted Prometheus he bound with inextricable bonds, cruel chains, and drove a shaft through his middle, and set on him a long-winged eagle, which used to eat his immortal liver; but by night the liver grew as much again everyway as the long-winged bird devoured in the whole day (Hesiod's Theogony).

[sketching-shark]

WHAT ABOUT SHA WUJING???

Fish man needs love

HELL YEAH HE DOES!!!

Honestly while I know Sha Wujing's much more "passive" in the story than Sun Wukong or Zhu Bajie, the more I learn about his story & role the more I like him. Besides him toting the luggage, his often-given role of peacemaker among the pilgrims is an important one, and tbh his history pre-journey of being another military deity with the rank of general before being exiled to Earth and stabbed like a bazillion times for breaking a vase (which apparently has some really fascinating implication on account of that having the historical precedent of being the signal to start a coup), NOT TO MENTION LIKELY BEING THE YAOGUAI WHO ATE ALL NINE OF GOLDEN CICADA'S INCARNATIONS UNTIL TANG SANZANG, does suggest a pretty violent and really interesting contrast to his usual place during the journey itself. I genuinely think there's a lot that could be done in retellings with everyone's favorite Friar Sand, and he's definitely a figure that deserves love and attention in jttw-based works.

Also personal headcanon but I like to think he's even more of a double triple quadruple immortal than Sun Wukong on account of all the holy monks he devoured. If but one piece of Tang Sanzang's flesh could grant someone immortality, then imagine what eating an entire nine of him could do <3.

[journeytothewestresearch]

The Origin of Sandy from Lego Monkie Kid

Many readers will be surprised to learn that Sandy (fig. 1) has the longest association with the Journey to the West story cycle, predating Sun Wukong (c. 1000) and Zhu Bajie (14th-century) by centuries. He can be traced to an obscure desert spirit mentioned in an embellished 7th-century biography of the historical monk Xuanzang (a.k.a. Tang Sanzang; a.k.a. Mr. Tang). The spirit is said to have helped him find water after the cleric spilled his supply while traveling through the "Moving Sands", a harsh desert in the northwest of China. It's interesting to note that the spirit was eventually equated with a Buddhist deity and came to be worshiped in Japan as the "General of the Deep Sands" (Jinja Taishō, 深沙大將) (fig. 2), a minor Buddhist guardian spirit. Japanese material describes him as a seemingly frightening creature with a bloody mouth, a necklace of skulls, serpent-wrapped arms, and demonic knees.

The spirit was eventually remolded as a monster, as evidence by his appearance as a villain in the 13th-century version of the story cycle. He claims to have eaten Xuanzang's two previous incarnations when they attempted to obtain the scriptures in the past. But he is eventually defeated and helps the monk cross a river with a magic golden bridge. This monster eventually became the antagonist-turned-protagonist Sha Wujing in the 1592 version of Journey to the West (fig. 3). For more info, see my article on the subject.

Now a note on Sandy's weapon. Those who have seen Lego Monkie Kid will know that he uses a large, chunky "crescent staff". This is commonly referred to as a "Monk's spade" in martial culture. But while weapons featuring the crescent do date to the Ming, the Monk's spade is believed to be a 20th-century weapon. Most importantly, the 1592 edition of the novel mentions that Sha Wujing actually uses a wooden, pearl-covered staff. See my other article for more info.