Once a thought starts, love follows without fail; once feeling lingers, calamity is certain to breed.
What business has the bright spirit with sorting out the Three Terraces?
When the practice is complete it returns of itself to the primal sea.
Whether one becomes an immortal or becomes a Buddha, the arrangement must be made from within.
Wash it clean, wash it clean, until not a mote of dust remains,
and the fruit ripens true and rises to the upper realms.
We tell now how the monks of the temple, at daybreak, could not find Tripitaka and his disciples, and said to one another, “We did not manage to keep them, we did not manage to say goodbye, we did not even manage to beg them to stay — clean away we have let a living bodhisattva walk.” Just as they were saying it, several great households from the south quarter arrived to invite them. The monks clapped their hands and said, “Last night we kept no watch, and tonight they have all ridden off on the clouds.”
The crowd all bowed toward the empty sky and gave thanks. Once this had been said, every officer and commoner in the city came to know of it.
Word went out to these great households that they should all prepare the five sacrificial beasts, flowers and fruit, and go to the shrine of the living to make offering and repay the kindness — of which no more.
We tell now how the Tang Monk and his three companions ate the wind and slept on the water, and had a peaceful road of it for something over half a month. Then one day they came in sight of a high mountain. The Tang Monk took fright again and said, “Disciples, those ridges ahead are steep and sheer. Do take care.”
Pilgrim laughed and said, “The road on this side is drawing near the land of Buddha. There is certainly no fiend or demon here. Set your heart at ease, Master, and do not fret.” The Tang Monk said, “Disciple, although the Buddha-land is not far off, the temple monks said the other day that it is two thousand li down to the capital of India, and I still do not know how much road that is.”
Pilgrim said, “Master, it rather looks as though you have forgotten the Heart Scripture that the Crow's Nest Chan Master gave you.”
Tripitaka said, “The Prajna Heart Scripture is the robe and bowl I carry on my body. Since the Crow's Nest Chan Master taught it to me, which day have I not recited it? Which hour could I forget it? I can say it backwards. How should I forget it?”
Pilgrim said, “Master, you can only recite it. You never asked that master to explain it.” Tripitaka said, “Ape's head! How can you say I do not understand it? Do you understand it?” Pilgrim said, “I understand it. I understand it.”
From this point, Tripitaka and Pilgrim did not make another sound. Off to one side, Eight Rules fell about laughing and Sha Monk was tickled half to death, and he said, “Big mouth! You came out of a demon's hide the same as I did. It is not as though you were some Chan monk from somewhere who has sat through the scriptures being expounded, or one of those chanting monks who has watched the Law being preached.”
“Playing the trickster, striking a pose, saying you know it, you understand it — how is it you have gone quiet? Let us hear the lecture. Explain, if you please.” Sha Monk said, “Second brother, do you believe him?”
“Big brother spins a long tale to keep Master walking. He knows how to swing a cudgel, that is all. What would he know about expounding scripture?” Tripitaka said, “Wu-neng, Wu-jing, stop this idle talk.”
“Wu-kung understands it as having no words and no letters. That is true understanding.”
As master and disciples were talking, they had in fact walked a good stretch of road and left several ridges behind, and beside the way a great temple came into view. Tripitaka said, “Wu-kung, there is a temple ahead.”
“Look at it — it is rather:”
“Not small and not large, yet it has glazed tiles of green;”
“half new and half old, yet it has an eight-fold wall of red.”
“Faintly one sees the ancient pines with their canopies spread, and there is no telling how many hundreds or thousands of years those relics have stood to this day;”
“softly one hears the running water sounding its strings, and no one says which dynasty it was that first opened this hill and left it standing.”
“On the mountain gate, written large: Gold-Spread Chan Monastery;”
“on the hanging board, left inscribed: Relic of High Antiquity.”
Pilgrim read it as Gold-Spread Chan Monastery, and Eight Rules also said it was Gold-Spread Chan Monastery. Tripitaka, on his horse, fell to thinking, and said, “Gold-spread... gold-spread... can this be the borders of Shravasti?”
Eight Rules said, “Master, what a thing! I have followed you for years and never once knew the road, and today I know the road too?” Tripitaka said, “Not so.”
“I regularly read the scriptures and the canon, and they say the Buddha was at the city of Shravasti, in the Jeta Grove, the Garden of the Friendless. The story of this garden is that the Elder Anathapindika asked the prince to sell it to him, and invited the Buddha to expound scripture there.”
“The prince said, 'This garden of mine is not for sale. If he wants to buy it from me, it will have to be gold spread out to cover the ground.' The Elder Anathapindika, hearing this, thereupon made bricks of gold and covered the garden ground with them, and only then did he manage to buy the prince's Jeta Grove, and only then did he manage to invite the World-Honoured One to preach.”
“I am thinking this Gold-Spread Monastery may be that very story.”
Eight Rules laughed and said, “What luck! If it really is that very story, let us go and pinch a brick or two off him to give away.” Everyone had another laugh, and Tripitaka at last got down off his horse.
They entered the mountain gate, and there below it were men with carrying-poles, men with packs, men pushing barrows, and whole cartloads settled down for the night: some of those sleeping had gone to sleep, and some of those talking had gone on talking. Suddenly they caught sight of the four of them, master and disciples, the handsome ones handsomer and the ugly ones uglier, and everyone was somewhat afraid, and did in fact make a little room for them.
Tripitaka, in great fear of trouble, kept saying under his breath, “Manners. Manners.” At this the company all pulled themselves in somewhat. They rounded the hall of the guardian kings, and out came a Chan monk, of no common bearing.
Truly:
“His face like the light of the full moon, his body like a bodhi tree;”
“holding his staff, his sleeves streaming in the wind, in straw sandals on the stone road.”
Tripitaka saw him and made his greeting. The monk at once returned it and said, “Master, where have you come from?” Tripitaka said, “Your disciple is Chen Xuanzang. By command of the Great Tang Emperor of the Eastern Land I am dispatched to the Western Heaven, to worship the Buddha and seek the scriptures.”
“Passing by your treasured place, I make bold to call, and would borrow a night's lodging. Tomorrow I go on.” The monk said, “Our poor mountain is a common endowment of the ten directions. Anyone at all may take his pleasure here.”
“How much the more so for an elder, a divine monk of the Eastern Land. If we may but make our offering, we count ourselves most fortunate.” Tripitaka thanked him, and at once called his three companions to come along with him.
They passed along the covered walk and by the kitchen, and went straight through to the abbot's quarters. Greetings done, they settled themselves as host and guests, and Pilgrim and the other two sat down as well, hands folded before them.
The story goes that when the temple heard that scripture-seeking monks had arrived from the Great Tang of the Eastern Land, everyone in it, great and small, permanent residents and overnight lodgers, elders and novices alike, came one and all to pay their respects. Tea done, the vegetarian offering was set out.
At this point the elder was still saying the grace over the meal, but Eight Rules was in far too much of a hurry, and steamed buns, plain dishes and noodle soup all went down together in one sweep. The abbot's quarters were rather full just then, and those with any learning praised Tripitaka's bearing;
and those out for a laugh all watched Eight Rules eat. Now Sha Monk had a quick eye, and seeing how things stood, he gave Eight Rules a covert pinch and said, “Manners.”
Eight Rules got flustered, and cried out in his haste, “Manners, manners — and an empty belly!”
Sha Monk laughed and said, “Second brother, you do not know. There is a great deal of culture in this world, and if you go by what is inside the belly, it is exactly the same as yours and mine.” Only then would Eight Rules stop.
Tripitaka said the closing grace, the tables were cleared away on both sides, and Tripitaka gave thanks. The temple monks asked how they had come from the Eastern Land, and Tripitaka, having got as far as the old relics, then asked the reason for the name of Gold-Spread Monastery.
That monk answered, “This temple was originally the Garden of the Friendless Monastery of the country of Shravasti, and was also called Jetavana. Because it was here that the Elder Anathapindika invited the Buddha to expound scripture, and gold bricks were spread on the ground, the name was changed again to the one it has now.”
“Within sight in front of this temple of ours lies the country of Shravasti.”
“At that time the Elder Anathapindika was living in the country of Shravasti, and our poor mountain was originally that Elder's Jetavana, and so it came to be called the Monastery of the Friendless and the Spread Gold. Behind the temple the foundations of Jetavana are still there.”
“In recent years, whenever there has been a downpour of seasonable rain, gold and silver beads still wash out of it. Those with luck pick them up now and then.” Tripitaka said, “So the saying is no idle tale, and is true indeed.”
Then he asked, “Coming into your treasured mountain just now, I saw beneath the gate, in the two covered walks, a great many merchants with mules, horses, carts and carrying-loads. Why are they lodging here?” The monks said, “This mountain of ours is called Hundred-Foot Mountain.”
“In earlier years it was peaceful enough, but of late, with the turning round of the weather, somehow or other a few centipede spirits have been born, and they are always on the road below, injuring travellers;”
“They do not go so far as to take a life, but the fact is that people dare not walk there. Below the mountain is a pass called Cockcrow Pass. Only when the cock crows does anyone dare go through.”
“Those travellers, having arrived late, feared it would be awkward, and so have borrowed a night on our poor mountain and will go on after the cock crows.” Tripitaka said, “We shall wait for the cock and go then too.”
As master and disciples were talking, another meal was brought in, and the Tang Monk and the rest ate it. At this time the moon of the first quarter was bright.
Tripitaka and Pilgrim were strolling under the moon when a lay attendant came with word: “Our old master would like to meet these persons of China.”
Tripitaka turned quickly, and saw an old monk holding a bamboo staff, who came forward and made his greeting, saying, “Is this the master come from China?” Tripitaka returned the greeting and said, “I dare not claim it.” The old monk praised him without stopping, and then asked, “What is the master's honoured age?”
Tripitaka said, “I have idled away forty-five years. Might I ask the reverend abbot's honoured age?” The old monk laughed and said, “I am foolishly older than the master by one full cycle.”
Pilgrim said, “This year that makes you a hundred and five. How many years would you say I have?” The old monk said, “The master's face is ancient and his spirit clear, and besides, on a moonlit night the eyes swim, and I cannot make it out at a glance.” They talked a while, and then went to look at the back walk.
Tripitaka said, “You spoke just now of the foundations of the Garden of the Friendless. Where exactly are they?” The old monk said, “Just outside the back gate.”
“Have the gate opened at once.” What they saw was a patch of empty ground with some footings of piled broken stone.
Tripitaka put his palms together and sighed:
“I remember of old the almsgiver Sudatta, who once took gold and treasure to relieve the poor and sick.”
“Jetavana has left its name here for a thousand ages; but in what quarter is the Elder now, and who keeps him company?”
They were all enjoying the moon, and walked on slowly.
Drawing near the outside of the back gate, they came to a terrace and sat a while, when suddenly they heard the sound of weeping. Tripitaka listened quietly and carefully; what was being wept were words of pain that a mother and father could not know of. He was moved to the heart and, without noticing it, let his tears fall, and turned to ask the monks, “Who is that, and where, grieving so?”
The old monk, hearing the question, at once told the other monks to go back first and make tea. Seeing that no one was left, only then did he bow down before the Tang Monk and Pilgrim.
Tripitaka helped him up and said, “Reverend abbot, why do you make such a bow?” The old monk said, “Your disciple is over a hundred years old and understands human affairs a little, and in the stillness of meditation I have seen a thing or two.”
“As for your worship and his disciples, your disciple knows a little of the matter, and it is not as with other people. But if I speak of this grievous business, none but this master here can tell true from false.”
Pilgrim said, “Say on — what is the matter?” The old monk said, “This day last year, when your disciple was in the clear-minded moon of meditation, I suddenly heard a gust of wind, and there was a sound of grief and complaint.”
“Your disciple came down from his couch and went to look on the foundations of Jetavana, and there was a beautiful and proper young woman. I asked her, 'Whose daughter are you?'”
“'And why have you come to this place?' That young woman said, 'I am the princess of the country of India. Because I was looking at the flowers under the moon, I was blown here by a wind.'”
“I locked her in a shabby empty room, and had the room built up like a cell, leaving only a small hole in the door, just big enough to pass a bowl through. At the time I put it about among the monks that she was a fiend, and that I had bound her.”
“But we monks are people of compassion, and I was unwilling to harm her life.”
“Every day I gave her two meals of coarse tea and coarse rice, and on that she has kept alive. That young woman is clever too, and understood my meaning at once.”
“Fearing she might be defiled by the monks, she pretended madness and played the fiend, sleeping in her own urine and lying in her own filth. By day she would talk nonsense and go about vacant and stupid;”
“but in the quiet of the night she would think of her mother and father and weep. Several times I have gone into the city to make enquiries about the princess, and there is nothing wrong at all.”
“So I have kept her close under lock and key and not let her out. Now fortunately your worship has come to this country, and I beg you, when you reach the capital, to spread your powers widely and make it clear, make it clear: first to save and deliver the good, and second to show forth your divine powers.” Tripitaka and Pilgrim, having heard him out, took it earnestly to heart.
Just as they were speaking, two young monks came to invite them to take tea and settle for the night, and so they went back. Eight Rules and Sha Monk, in the abbot's quarters, were muttering away: “Tomorrow we are to travel at cockcrow, and here he is still not come to bed.”
Pilgrim said, “What is the idiot saying now?” Eight Rules said, “Let us get to bed. At this hour of the night, what is there left to look at?” And so the old monk went off, and the Tang Monk turned in.
It was just then that:
“People still, the moon sinking, the flowers dreaming quietly; a warm breeze just breathing through the gauze at the window.”
“The copper vessel drips and drips, and one watches the third measure; the Silver River, bright and clear, lights the Nine Flowers.”
They had not been asleep long that night when the cock was heard. The merchants ahead of them all got up in a bustle, brought out lamps and made their food.
The elder woke Eight Rules and Sha Monk too, buckled the horse and got things together, and Pilgrim called for a lamp to be brought. The temple monks had already risen, and had tea, hot water and refreshments laid on in the back to wait upon them.
Eight Rules was delighted, ate a plate of steamed buns, and led out the baggage and the horse. Tripitaka and Pilgrim made their farewells to the company. The old monk said again to Pilgrim, “That grievous business — keep it in mind, keep it in mind.”
Pilgrim laughed and said, “I have it, I have it. When I reach the city I shall be able to hear the sound and judge the sense, see the face and tell the colour of it.”
That crowd of merchants, in a hubbub of noise, all took to the high road together. It was getting on for the hour of the Tiger when they passed Cockcrow Pass, and at the hour of the Snake they first saw the city wall.
Truly it was an iron urn and a city of metal, a divine continent and a heavenly seat. That city:
“A tiger crouching, a dragon coiled, the lie of the land high; phoenix towers and unicorn pavilions, their bright colours swaying.”
“The imperial moat runs its water like a girdle ring; the blessed ground follows the hills, and planted there, a brocade standard.”
“The dawn sun on flags and banners lights the carriage road; the spring wind carries pipes and drums across every stream and bridge.”
“The king holds to the Way, so caps and robes prevail; the five grains ripen in plenty and fine men come to the fore.”
That day they came in by the East Market Street, and the merchants each made for their inns.
As master and disciples entered the city and were walking along, there was a Bureau of Common Reception, and Tripitaka and the rest went straight into it. The clerk in charge at once reported to the superintendent, “Outside there are four monks of strange appearance, and they have led in a white horse.” The superintendent, hearing that there was a horse, knew at once that these were on official business, and came out of the hall to meet them.
Tripitaka made his greeting and said, “This poor monk is one sent by the Tang court of the Eastern Land to Spirit Mountain and the Great Thunderclap Monastery, to see the Buddha and seek scriptures. I carry a rescript on my person, to be inspected at court. I would borrow one night's rest at your excellency's high office, and go on when the business is done.”
The superintendent returned the greeting and said, “This office was established to receive envoys, and it is only right that we should welcome you. Please come in, please come in.” Tripitaka was delighted, and told his disciples to come and meet him. The superintendent, seeing their ugly faces, took a private fright, not knowing whether they were men or ghosts, and could only, trembling, order tea and set out a meal.
Tripitaka, seeing his fright, said, “Do not be alarmed, your excellency. My three disciples, though their features are ugly, are all good at heart. As the common saying has it, a bad face and a good heart — why be afraid?”
The superintendent, hearing this, only then settled his nerves, and asked, “Master of the Realm, where does the Tang court lie?” Tripitaka said, “In the land of China, in the Southern Continent of Jambudvipa.” He asked again, “When did you leave home?”
Tripitaka said, “In the thirteenth year of Zhenguan; I have now passed through fourteen years, and have suffered ten thousand waters and a thousand hills to reach this place.” The superintendent said, “A divine monk! A divine monk!” Tripitaka asked, “And how many years has the reign of your superior country run?”
The superintendent said, “Our humble place is the Great Country of India, and from the Great Progenitor and the Great Ancestor down to today it has been handed on more than five hundred years. The present reigning sire loves hills and streams, flowers and plants, is styled the Yizong Emperor, and changed the reign-name to Jingyan, which has now run twenty-eight years.”
Tripitaka said, “Today this poor monk wishes to go and see the throne, to have the rescript exchanged. I do not know whether I may find the court sitting.” The superintendent said, “Good, good — very good indeed.”
“Lately, because the king's daughter the princess has reached the green spring of twenty, a coloured tower has been built high at the crossroads, where she throws down an embroidered ball, flinging a marriage at heaven to choose a consort.”
“Today is just at the height of the bustle. I should think our royal sire has not yet risen from court, and if you wish to exchange the rescript, this is a good moment to go.” Tripitaka was pleased and made to set off, when a meal was brought in, and he ate it with the superintendent, Pilgrim and the rest.
The hour was already past noon. Tripitaka said, “I had best be going.” Pilgrim said, “I will go and guard Master.” Eight Rules said, “I will go.”
Sha Monk said, “Second brother, leave off, will you. Your face is nothing much to look at, and do not go swaggering about outside the palace gate.”
“Let big brother go instead.” Tripitaka said, “Wu-jing speaks well. The idiot is coarse and clumsy; Wu-kung has a certain fineness about him.” The idiot pushed out his lips and said, “Apart from Master, there is not much to choose between the faces of the three of us.”
Tripitaka then put on his cassock, and Pilgrim took up the document bag, and they went together. In the streets they saw farmers and scholars, workmen and merchants, men of letters and men of none, all calling out together, “We are off to watch the ball-throwing!”
Tripitaka stood at the roadside and said to Pilgrim, “The people and dress here, the palaces and furnishings, the speech and manner of talking, are just as they are in our Great Tang. I am thinking how my own late mother, in her lay days, also threw an embroidered ball, met an old betrothal, and so became man and wife with my father.”
“They have this same custom here as well.” Pilgrim said, “Shall we go and have a look at it too?”
Tripitaka said, “It will not do, it will not do. Your clothes and mine are not suitable, and there may be suspicion.” Pilgrim said, “Master, have you forgotten what the old monk of the Gold-Spread Monastery of the Friendless said?”
“First, to look at the coloured tower; second, to tell the true from the false. With all this rush and bustle, that emperor is bound to be listening to his daughter's happy news — how would he be sitting in court attending to business? Let us just go and come back.”
Tripitaka, hearing this, did indeed go along with Pilgrim, and saw that people of every sort were there watching the ball-throwing. Ah! Who was to know that this going would turn out to be:
“The old fisherman has cast down his hook and line; and from today he will pull up trouble.”
The story tells how that king of India, out of his love of hills and streams and flowering plants, took his consorts and his daughter into the imperial garden the year before last to enjoy the moonlight; and this stirred up a fiend, which carried the true princess away and turned itself into a false princess in her place.
Knowing that the Tang Monk would arrive at this place in this year, this month, this day and this hour, it borrowed the wealth of the state to raise a coloured tower, meaning to take the Tang Monk for a mate, and so gather his primal male essence and become a Great Monad immortal.
Exactly at the third quarter of the noon hour, Tripitaka and Pilgrim mingled into the crowd and drew near below the tower, just as the princess had lit her incense and was making her prayer to heaven and earth. To left and right were fifty or seventy powdered beauties and embroidery maids, and the attendants close by held the embroidered ball.
That tower had eight windows finely wrought, and the princess, turning her eyes about, saw the Tang Monk come very close; she took up the embroidered ball and with her own hand threw it down on the Tang Monk's head. The Tang Monk got such a start that his Vairocana cap was knocked askew, and with both hands he hurriedly steadied the ball.
The ball went rolling into his sleeve. From the tower they all cried out together, “They have hit a monk! They have hit a monk!” Alas!
At the crossroads those merchants and the rest, in a great press and hubbub, all came rushing to snatch the embroidered ball. Pilgrim gave a shout, bared his teeth, bent his back, and grew to a fearsome height of three zhang, pulling a hideous face.
He so frightened them that they went sprawling and scrambling and dared not come near, and in a moment the crowd had scattered. Pilgrim then went back to his own form.
The embroidery maids and palace women from the tower, with the eunuchs great and small, all came and bowed before the Tang Monk, saying, “Honoured sir, honoured sir — please come into the court and receive congratulation.” Tripitaka hastily returned the bow and raised them up, then turned and complained to Pilgrim, “You ape's head! This is you meddling with me again.”
Pilgrim laughed and said, “The embroidered ball came down on your head and rolled into your sleeve. What has it to do with me? Why complain?” Tripitaka said, “In a case like this, how are we to manage?”
Pilgrim said, “Master, set your mind at rest for now. Go in to the audience and see the throne, and I will go back to the hostel and tell Eight Rules and Sha Monk to wait.”
“If the princess does not take you, then let it be — have the rescript exchanged and go on. If she must have you, then say to the king, 'Summon my disciples here; I have a word to give them.'”
“When they summon the three of us into court, I shall be able to tell the true from the false. This is the plan of leaning on the marriage to subdue the fiend.” The Tang Monk, having no choice, followed his words, and Pilgrim turned back to the hostel.
That elder was hustled by the palace women to the front of the tower. The princess came down, took him by the hand with her jade fingers, and they mounted the treasure carriage together; the retinue was drawn up in order and they turned back toward the palace gate.
Early on, a Yellow Gate officer had already reported ahead: “Your Majesty, the princess is leading a monk by the hand. It seems the embroidered ball struck him. They are now outside the Meridian Gate awaiting your command.”
When the king heard this his heart was much displeased, and he meant to have them driven off; but not knowing what his daughter's own mind might be, he could only master his feelings and summon them in.
The princess and the Tang Monk came thereupon below the Hall of the Golden Bells, and it was truly a case of: a pair of husband and wife crying Long Life, two houses of the crooked and the straight bowing for a Thousand Autumns.
The rites done, they were summoned up into the hall, and the king opened his mouth and asked, “Where has this monk come from, that he should meet my daughter's thrown ball and be struck by it?” The Tang Monk prostrated himself and reported, “This poor monk is one sent by the Great Tang Emperor of the Southern Continent of Jambudvipa to the Great Thunderclap Monastery in the Western Heaven, to worship the Buddha and seek scriptures.”
“Having a rescript for the long road, I came expressly to attend at court and have it exchanged.”
“Passing below the coloured tower at the crossroads, I did not expect that the princess would throw down the embroidered ball and strike this poor monk on the head. This poor monk is a man who has left home and follows a different teaching — how should I dare to be mated with a leaf of jade and a branch of gold?”
“I beg you a thousand times to pardon this poor monk's capital offence, exchange the rescript, and send me off early to Spirit Mountain, to see the Buddha and seek scriptures and return to my own country; and I shall record Your Majesty's heavenly kindness for ever.”
The king said, “You are a holy monk of the Eastern Land, and this is truly a case of a thousand li of destiny drawn together on a thread. My daughter has this year reached twenty and is unmarried, and because we chose today as favourable in year, month, day and hour, we built the coloured tower and threw the ball, to seek a good match.”
“As luck would have it you came along and were struck. Though I am not pleased, I do not know what my daughter's mind may be.” The princess knocked her head on the ground and said, “Royal father, the common saying goes, marry a cock and follow the cock, marry a dog and follow the dog.”
“Your daughter had a vow made beforehand: having tied this ball, I made announcement to heaven and earth and the bright spirits, and flung the marriage at heaven by throwing it. Today it has struck a holy monk, which is a bond from a former life, and so I have met him in this one. How should I dare to shift?”
“It is my wish to take him for a consort.” The king was then pleased, and at once summoned the Chief Astronomer of the Bureau of Heaven to choose a date. On one side they set about preparing the dowry, and an edict went out proclaiming it to the empire.
When Tripitaka heard this he gave no thanks at all, but only kept saying, “Pardon me! Pardon me!” The king said, “This monk is very unreasonable. With the wealth of a whole kingdom I offer to make you my consort — why will you not stay and enjoy it, when all your thought is on fetching scriptures?”
“If you refuse once more, I shall have the Brocade-Robe Guard take you out and behead you.” The elder was so frightened that his soul left his body, and could only, trembling, knock his head and report, “I am moved by Your Majesty's heavenly kindness.”
“But this poor monk travels in a party of four, and there are three disciples of mine outside. I should accept now, only I have not yet given them a word of instruction.”
“I beg you a thousand times to summon them here, exchange the rescript, and send them off early, so as not to spoil the purpose of our coming west.”
The king thereupon granted the request and said, “Where are your disciples?” Tripitaka said, “They are all at the Bureau of Common Reception.”
He at once dispatched an officer to summon the holy monk's disciples to receive the rescript and go west, leaving the holy monk here to be consort. The elder could only rise and stand in attendance.
There is a poem to prove it:
“The great elixir does not leak, and needs all three entire; the bitter discipline is hard to bring off, and one resents an evil bond.”
“The Way lies in the sages' transmission, the practice lies in oneself; good comes of a man's accumulating, and blessing comes of heaven.”
“Do not indulge the six roots with their many cravings; break open at once the one nature, the original source. Without love and without longing, one is clean of itself; and that will surely bring release and let you rise beyond.”
At the time the dispatched officer went to the Bureau of Common Reception to summon the Tang Monk's disciples — of which no more. We tell now how Pilgrim, having parted from the Tang Monk below the coloured tower, walked two steps and laughed twice, and went back to the hostel in high spirits.
Eight Rules and Sha Monk came to meet him, saying, “Brother, what are you laughing about so? And where is Master?” Pilgrim said, “The master has had good luck.”
Eight Rules said, “We have not reached the place yet, nor seen the Buddha nor got the scriptures and come back — what luck is this?” Pilgrim laughed and said, “Master and I got only as far as below the coloured tower at the crossroads, and as luck would have it the reigning princess threw down an embroidered ball and hit Master with it. Master was hustled by palace women, embroidery maids and eunuchs to the front of the tower, boarded the carriage with the princess and went into the palace, and has been taken for consort. If that is not luck, what is it?”
When Eight Rules heard this he stamped his feet and beat his breast, saying, “If I had known, I should have gone — it is all that lazy Sha Monk's fault. If you had not stopped me, I would have made straight for the foot of the coloured tower, and one embroidered ball would have hit old Pig, and the princess would have taken me. Would not that have been fine and splendid?”
“Handsome and smart, and settled, and all of us in luck and having a bit of fun — how jolly that would be.” Sha Monk stepped up, wiped a hand across his face and said, “Shame on you, shame on you. What a mouth you have on you.”
“Three mace of silver for an old donkey — and boasting he can ride it. If an embroidered ball had hit you, they would have burnt paper all night to send the thing away, and even then thought it too slow. Would they dare let bad luck like you in at the door?”
Eight Rules said, “You black fellow, you have no sense of what is what. Ugly is ugly, but there is still some flavour to it. As the old saying goes, 'Coarse skin and flesh, strong bone and frame — each has a point in its favour.'”
Pilgrim said, “Idiot, stop talking nonsense, and get the baggage together. I only fear Master will get into a panic and call for us, and then we had better go into the palace to protect him.” Eight Rules said, “Brother, now you have said it wrong.”
“Master has become a consort. He is going into the palace to lie with the emperor's daughter — it is not as though he were climbing hills and tramping roads, meeting fiends and running into demons. What do you want to protect him for? At an age like his, do you suppose he does not know what goes on under the bedclothes, that you have to go and hold him up?”
Pilgrim seized him by the ear with one hand and, brandishing a fist, cursed him: “You lecherous lump, whose filthy mind never stops! What rubbish is that you are talking?”
While they were squabbling, the superintendent came in with word: “His Majesty has issued an order, and an officer is dispatched to invite the three divine monks.” Eight Rules said, “What is it in truth that he invites us for?” The superintendent said, “The old divine monk has had the good fortune to be struck by the princess's embroidered ball and taken for consort, and so an officer is dispatched to invite you.”
Pilgrim said, “Where is the officer? Tell him to come in.” That officer, seeing Pilgrim make his greeting, returned it and then dared not look up, and only kept muttering to himself, “Is it a ghost, or a fiend?”
“Is it a thunder god, or a night-stalker?”
Pilgrim said, “You there, officer — you have something to say and do not say it. Why do you hesitate?” That officer was so flustered that, trembling, he raised the imperial order in both hands and babbled, “My princess invites you to meet the family; my lord invites the family to meet.”
Eight Rules said, “We have no instruments of torture here, we shall not beat you. Take your time and speak, do not be afraid.” Pilgrim said, “Do you suppose he is afraid of a beating?”
“He is afraid of that face of yours. Get the loads packed and the horse led, and come into the palace to see Master and talk business.”
This was truly a case of:
“Meeting a narrow road, there is no room to turn aside; and it will surely make love and kindness turn to enmity.”
There is no knowing what was said when they saw the king, and you must listen to the next chapter for the explanation.
A Thought Begins, and Love Follows. Chapter 92 ended with three rhinoceros demons dead and four horns sawn off them; this chapter opens with a poem about a thought. The jump is not a change of subject. The last chapter's monsters wanted the smell of incense and the taste of offerings, and it killed them. This chapter's trouble will be softer and much harder to see coming, and the poem is warning us that it has already started.
The lyric belongs to a tune-pattern the novel comes back to often, and its shape is worth knowing because it recurs: two balanced six-character clauses, then a seven-character line, then a six-character line that lands like a judge's ruling. Read aloud, the closing line always sounds final. The novel deploys this form the way a modern narrator might use a hard cut to black.
The scene that follows is pure housekeeping — the pilgrims have gone, the grateful city is left holding its offerings — but it is doing one quiet piece of work. It establishes that Tripitaka is now, in the eyes of ordinary people, a holy object rather than a man. Everyone who meets him from here on will want a piece of him. A king is about to want rather more than a piece.
Two Thousand Li Still to Go. Two things are set up in this passage and both pay off later. The first is distance: two thousand li to the capital, which sounds like a chore and turns out to be the last stretch of open road before everything closes in. The second is Pilgrim's confidence that a civilised country holds no monsters. The country they are entering does hold one, and it is wearing a princess.
The travel formula here is worth pausing on. Eating the wind and sleeping on the water covers half a month in four characters, and the novel does this constantly — it spends four characters on a fortnight here and, a moment later, well over two hundred on a single quarrel. Time in this book runs at the speed of talk. Where nobody is speaking, weeks vanish.
Then Pilgrim needles his master about the Heart Scripture, and the tone changes. For the next two hundred and forty characters the novel stops being an adventure and becomes an argument about what it means to understand a text — carried on by a monkey, a pig and a river-demon, on a mountain road, with the monk losing.
I Understand It, I Understand It. This is one of the most-quoted exchanges in the later chapters, and it is over in four lines. Tripitaka can recite the Heart Scripture backwards. Pilgrim points out that reciting is not understanding. Tripitaka demands to know whether the monkey understands it. The monkey says he does, twice, and then neither of them speaks again.
That silence is the argument. The Heart Scripture is the text that says form is emptiness and emptiness is form, and that there is nothing to attain; a commentary on it that used a lot of words would be missing its own point. So Pilgrim answers with none, and Tripitaka's own silence is his concession. When he finally speaks, a few lines further on, it is to say so out loud.
The comedy underneath is that neither Eight Rules nor Sha Monk can see any of this happening. To them the conversation simply stopped, and they assume their big brother has been caught bluffing. Eight Rules jeers that Pilgrim has never sat through a lecture in his life — which is entirely true, and entirely beside the point.
No Words and No Letters. Tripitaka's ruling — that understanding without words and letters is the true understanding — is the novel taking a side in an argument that had run in Chinese Buddhism for eight hundred years. The scripture-reading schools held that you get there by study. The Chan schools held that the transmission happens outside the texts altogether. A monk who has spent ninety chapters walking to India to fetch texts has just conceded the second position.
It is worth noticing who is in the room. The concession is made in front of two disciples who did not follow the argument, on a road, with nobody taking notes, and then the party walks on. The novel does not stop to admire it. That offhandedness is the joke and also the seriousness: the moment is not marked because it is not supposed to be marked.
And then the scenery arrives. The narrator has been holding the temple in reserve throughout the quarrel, and produces it the instant the quarrel ends, with the little apology that they had covered a good deal of ground while talking. The temple is where the whole rest of the chapter happens.
The Monastery of Spread Gold. A temple description in this novel is normally scene-setting and nothing more. This one is a clue, and the narrator plays fair: the verse spends its whole length saying that nobody knows how old the place is or who founded it, and then hands you the name on a board and lets you work it out at the same speed Tripitaka does.
Gold spread out. In the story every Buddhist reader would know, a rich layman wanted to buy a prince's garden to give to the Buddha, and the prince named an impossible price: cover the ground with gold. The layman covered it. The garden became the Buddha's most famous preaching ground. A monastery on the road to India calling itself Gold-Spread is not being poetic.
What makes the moment work is who gets it. Pilgrim can see through walls and Eight Rules can smell a demon at a mile, and both of them just read the sign. Tripitaka is the useless one of the party in almost every practical way, and this is his territory — he has read the books, and for once that is the skill the situation calls for.
Cover the Ground with Gold. The story Tripitaka tells here is the founding story of Jetavana, and it is one of the best known in Buddhism. A rich layman of Shravasti, famous for feeding the destitute, wanted to buy a park from Prince Jeta as a gift to the Buddha. The prince, meaning to be rid of him, said the price was as much gold as would cover the ground. The layman began carting gold in. The prince gave in, kept the trees as his own contribution, and the place ended up named for both of them.
That is why the two halves of the name sit oddly together — the Jeta Grove and the Garden of the Friendless. It is a joint dedication, and the Chinese preserves the seam. A Chinese reader in the Ming would have known the story the way an English reader knows the Good Samaritan, which is why the novel can drop the words gold spread on a signboard and expect it to ring.
Something quieter is going on as well. Pilgrim has just been shown to understand a scripture better than his master does. Some two hundred and twenty characters later, Tripitaka reads a signboard nobody else can read and tells a story nobody else knows. The novel is not humiliating him; it is dividing the labour, and the second half of this chapter needs exactly the kind of knowledge only he has.
Mind Your Manners. The novel does something clever with pace here. It has just delivered a piece of high Buddhist history, and it follows it immediately with Eight Rules wanting to steal a brick, a yard full of carters who cannot be bothered to look up, and a monk hissing at his disciples to behave. The sacred and the shabby share a courtyard, which is how monasteries in this book generally work.
The travellers in the yard are worth a second look. They are here because the monastery puts up commercial traffic for the night, and in a few pages one of the monks will explain why they have to. The detail is not scenery — the chapter is quietly establishing that this is a working place with money worries, which makes what the abbot is hiding both more surprising and more understandable.
And then the Chan monk appears, and the verse gives him four lines of unbroken praise: moon-faced, straight as the bodhi tree, sleeves in the wind, straw sandals on stone. Nothing in the description is ironic. The novel means it — he is a good man — and that is precisely what makes the rest of his story land.
An Endowment of the Ten Directions. This is the most decorous passage in the chapter, and everything in it is correct. The abbot greets properly, offers hospitality on the right grounds, uses the right formal language, and seats his guests in the right order. Even the disciples manage to sit still. It is the last time in this chapter that anybody behaves well for a whole page.
The vocabulary is doing quiet work. A common endowment of the ten directions, the fragrance kitchen, the square of ten feet — three consecutive terms that all come out of scripture and have all worn down into ordinary building names. That is what a functioning religion looks like from the inside: the cosmology has become the floor plan.
One thing to carry forward. The monk says anyone at all may take his pleasure here, which is generous and also true, and the yard outside is full of carters paying for the privilege. This monastery takes in whoever arrives. Some years ago it took in someone it could not send away again, and that is the story the second half of the chapter is going to tell.
Manners, Manners, and an Empty Belly. The refectory scene is doing more than comedy. It is showing what happens when the four of them walk into a functioning institution: Tripitaka is admired, Eight Rules is gawped at, Sha Monk manages the damage, and Pilgrim is not mentioned at all. That is the party's social shape in one paragraph.
The word that carries the joke is one of the oldest in the language. In the Analects, Confucius uses it of the whole civilised inheritance he is trying to keep alive. Two thousand years later a pig-demon uses it to mean stop embarrassing me at dinner, and a moment later to point out that culture does not fill you up. The novel is not sneering at either sense. It just enjoys the distance between them.
Note also the pair of spellings in the first line. The temple's own vocabulary for permanent residents and overnight lodgers is written here with two characters that the rest of the novel writes differently, and neither spelling occurs anywhere else in the book. It is a small sign that this chapter's copy text went its own way — and it will matter more when the same thing happens to the name of the garden.
The Garden Also Called Jetavana. Everything Tripitaka guessed from a signboard turns out to be true, and the monk confirms it in three sentences without any fuss. That matter-of-factness is the point: to the people who live here, the most famous garden in Buddhism is simply the land the monastery sits on, and the name has changed twice for reasons everyone locally knows.
The garden's name is worth watching closely, because the chapter cannot keep it steady. Jetavana is written one way here and another way six times elsewhere in these same few pages, with two characters that differ by a single stroke and that copyists had been running together for centuries. Our text prints both. There is no reading in which one is right and the other wrong — they are the same name, and the printer simply used whichever block came to hand.
Underneath the confirmation there is a small piece of comedy still running. Sha Monk has just observed that most cultivation is as empty as a pig's stomach, and the very next thing that happens is a learned exchange between two monks about the antiquities of a holy site. The novel does not join the two up. It just puts them next to each other and moves on.
Gold Still Washing Out of the Ground. Two things happen in this passage and they look unrelated. Gold is still washing out of the ground behind the temple, and there are centipedes on the road below it. Both are answers to questions Tripitaka asked, and both are delivered in the same flat local-information voice — the way a villager tells you the church is twelfth-century and the bridge is out.
The gold beads are the more remarkable image. The most extravagant act of generosity in the tradition happened here, and what survives of it is a bit of wall footing and some beads that come up after rain, collected by whoever is lucky. Nobody is mining it. Nobody has built a shrine. It is simply a field behind a temple where money occasionally surfaces.
And with the centipedes the chapter starts folding its two halves together. The merchants in the yard are stranded because of them, which is why the yard is full, which is why Tripitaka asked, which is what has kept everyone talking late into the night. In a few more lines an old monk will use that late hour to say something he has been holding for a year.
Wait for the Cock. This is the passage where the chapter changes gear, and it does it entirely through weather and furniture. A road closed by centipedes means a yard full of stranded merchants, which means the monks stay up talking, which means Tripitaka agrees to wait for dawn, which means there is a night to fill. Then the tables go away, the moon comes up, and two of them wander outside.
The centipedes themselves deserve a note. They are the only monsters in the chapter and they never appear. They have no names, no cave, no lineage, and nobody fights them; they are a fact about the road, like a washout. The novel has spent ninety chapters on demons who need defeating and here presents one that simply needs waiting out.
And then the old master sends word that he would like to see the people from China. It is phrased as courtesy and it is not courtesy. He has been waiting a year for somebody from somewhere else to walk through his gate, and he has just heard that four of them are in the refectory.
Older by a Full Cycle. Two very old men exchange courtesies about their ages while a third, who is older than both put together, listens and then joins in for a joke. The scene is played entirely straight, and everything in it is correct — the modest formula for one's own age, the honorific for another's, the deflection of a compliment, the graceful refusal to guess.
Underneath the manners something is being established that the chapter needs. The old monk is a hundred and five. Whatever he is about to confess happened a year ago, which means he was a hundred and four when he made the decision, and he has carried it alone since. The politeness is not padding; it is a man taking a very long run-up.
There is also a small structural joke. Pilgrim asks the old monk to guess his age and gets a compliment instead of a number, which is exactly what happens to everyone who asks about Pilgrim. Nobody in ninety-three chapters has been able to tell by looking.
Who Keeps the Elder Company Now. The chapter has been walking toward this field since the signboard, and when it arrives there is nothing there — bare ground and a line of broken stones. That is the honest answer to what became of the most famous act of giving in Buddhism, and the novel does not soften it. What is left is the name, some beads after rain, and a wall footing.
So Tripitaka does the only thing available and writes a poem, and the poem asks a question rather than making a claim. The name has lasted a thousand years; where is the man? It is not a rhetorical question with a comfortable answer waiting. Nobody replies to it, and the party walks on enjoying the moonlight, which is its own kind of reply.
And then, in the middle of all that gentle antiquarian sadness, somebody is crying in the dark. The join is deliberate and brutal: a monk grieving over a two-thousand-year-old benefactor hears a living person in distress somewhere behind him in the dark. He has been standing on the ruins of the greatest charity in the tradition, and the actual charity required of him tonight is going to be considerably more awkward.
When No One Was Left. This passage is almost entirely manners, and every piece of the manners is doing something. The old monk sends his own community away on an errand. He waits until they are gone. He bows to a man forty years his junior. He calls himself a disciple. He praises Pilgrim before asking anything of him. None of it is decoration — it is a man who has rehearsed this.
What he is about to say will make sense of it. He has kept a young woman locked in an outbuilding for a year, told his monks she is a demon, and fed her twice a day through a hole in a door. He believes he has been protecting her. He also knows exactly how it looks, which is why the courtyard had to be emptied first.
And there is a smaller thing worth noticing. He asks for Pilgrim, not for Tripitaka. The holy man is the one who wept at the sound of the crying; the monkey is the one who can tell what the crying is. The old monk has read the party correctly within about ten minutes of meeting them.
A Girl in a Locked Room. Here is what the old monk has been carrying. A year ago a young woman appeared on the temple's ruins in the middle of the night, claiming to be the princess of the country next door, blown there by a wind. He locked her in an outbuilding, bricked it up to a cell with a hole for a bowl, and told his monks he had captured a demon.
The novel is scrupulously even-handed about this. He is not a villain and the text never suggests he is. A monastery of men, a beautiful stranger with an unbelievable story, and a hundred-year-old abbot who could neither turn her out nor keep her openly — his solution was to make her a prisoner in order to make her safe. He has been feeding her twice a day since, and losing sleep, and telling nobody.
The detail that gives the game away is the hole in the door, just wide enough for a bowl. Everything else in his account can be read as emergency improvisation. Bricking a doorway down to a serving hatch is not an improvisation; it is a building project. Somebody spent a day on it, and then a year went by.
She Understood My Meaning. The confession ends with a fact that will not fit. There is a girl in a cell claiming to be the princess of India, and there is a princess of India, alive and well in her palace, whom the old monk has gone into the city and checked on more than once. Both of those are true. He cannot make them both be true, and he has been unable to say so to anybody.
What is easy to miss is how much of the last year was hers. She worked out within days what he needed her to be, and became it — mad, filthy, unapproachable — because a beautiful sane woman locked in a monastery outbuilding is in far more danger than a lunatic. The old monk describes this as her being clever. It is the most competent thing anyone in the chapter does.
And there is the word. She understood his meaning at once — the same word Pilgrim used about the Heart Scripture at the start of the chapter, when the argument was about whether reciting a text is the same as grasping it. Here it means a young woman reading a situation correctly and saving her own life with the answer. The novel does not draw the line between the two. It just uses the word twice.
The Copper Water-Clock. The chapter puts a poem about a peaceful night immediately after a confession about a girl in a cell, and the two do not touch. That is deliberate. The verse gives you the household asleep, the flowers dreaming, the water-clock counting, the Milky Way overhead — and somewhere in that same still house a young woman is awake and crying, which the poem does not mention and the reader cannot forget.
It is also the chapter's cleverest bit of timekeeping. The copper clock drips through the third measure of the night, and the very next line is the cock. The poem is not decoration; it is the passage of the hours, done in fourteen characters instead of a paragraph.
Then the practical world comes back with a bang: traders getting up, lamps lit, food cooking. The novel is always good at this — the sublime and the breakfast sharing a courtyard, neither of them apologising for the other.
Keep It in Mind, Keep It in Mind. The old monk gets one more line, and it is the same line twice: keep it in mind. He has no other move left. He cannot come with them, he cannot write to the king, and he has already broken his own silence to two strangers he met the night before. All he can do at the gate is repeat himself.
Pilgrim's answer is the more interesting half. He does not say he will help; he says he will be able to tell what is what — hear the sound and judge the sense, see the face and know it. That is a claim about perception, not about muscle, and it is the second time in this chapter that Pilgrim's real qualification turns out to be understanding rather than force.
And then the centipedes. A road so dangerous that trade stops on it every night gets crossed between two clock-hours in a single clause. The novel has already decided they are not the story, and it does not waste a sentence pretending otherwise.
An Iron Urn of a City. This is the fullest city description in the last stretch of the novel, and every line of it is a compliment. The site is commanding, the buildings are imperial, the moat is fine, the siting is auspicious, the music carries, the harvests are good, and the king holds to the Way. Nothing in it is ironic.
That matters, because the chapter is not building toward a den of iniquity. The capital of India is genuinely well governed. The king is fond of hills and water and flowering plants, his reign has run twenty-eight years, and his daughter has just come of age. The trouble here is not misrule. It is that one person in the palace is not who everybody thinks she is, and no amount of good government can see that.
Notice also what the novel is doing with vocabulary. India gets called a divine continent and a heavenly seat — the exact words used of China. The pilgrims have spent ninety chapters travelling west through places that were monstrous or barbarous or enchanted, and they have arrived somewhere that looks, to a Tang monk, entirely like home. Tripitaka is about to say so out loud.
And then the phoenix towers give way to an office with a clerk in it. The party walks in by the market street, the traders peel off to their inns, and the pilgrims go straight to the government hostel — where the man in charge works out who they are from the horse before he has even seen their faces. That inference is the first correct one anybody in this country makes about them, and it is drawn from livestock.
A Bad Face and a Good Heart. This is the novel at its most administrative, and it is very funny about it. The whole exchange runs on procedure, and procedure is what saves everybody: a man frightened out of his wits still serves the tea, because that is what the office is for. He has welcomed a distinguished envoy correctly, invited him in — and then the envoy's staff walk through the door.
And Tripitaka handles it well. He notices the man is terrified, names the problem out loud, and defuses it with a proverb — a bad face and a good heart. He has been travelling with these three for a long time and has clearly had to say it before.
Fourteen Years on the Road. Two officials exchange facts across a table and the chapter quietly loads its gun. The Tang has been going fourteen years on this journey. India has been going five hundred years under one house. The present king is twenty-eight years into his reign, and he loves hills and streams and flowering plants.
That last item is the one that matters, and the novel buries it in a list. A king fond of gardens keeps a garden; a princess who lives in it goes out to look at the flowers by moonlight; and a year ago something came out of the sky and took her. The superintendent has no idea he has just explained the plot.
There is also something worth noticing about how India is described. Great Progenitor, Great Ancestor, reign-names, a court that sits in the morning, a bureau for receiving envoys — every institution named is a Chinese one. The novel is not being lazy. It is making the point that after ninety chapters of monsters and enchantments the pilgrims have arrived somewhere entirely ordinary, and the trouble waiting for them there is domestic.
A Marriage Flung at Heaven. Here is the trap, and the novel lays it out in plain sight through a friendly official who thinks he is being helpful. The princess is twenty. There is a tower at the crossroads. She throws a ball into the crowd and marries whoever it hits. And the court is still sitting, so this is a fine afternoon to go and get your paperwork done.
The custom is worth understanding because everything turns on it. Flinging a marriage at heaven takes the choice away from the family and gives it to chance — which means nobody can object to the outcome, however awkward, without arguing with fate itself. That is precisely the protection the thing in the palace needs, and it is why she has arranged it this way.
Then the disciples squabble about who goes, and Sha Monk wins the argument in one line. He has now had the last word three times in this chapter: on cultivation and empty bellies, on who should escort their master, and on his brother's face. For a character usually described as the quiet one, he is running about a hundred per cent.
My Own Mother Was Married So. This is the passage that makes the chapter hurt, and it does it with a piece of family history the reader has known since the beginning. His mother threw a ball from a tower and it struck his father's cap as he rode past. That marriage ended in murder and an abandoned baby floating down a river, which is why a monastery raised Tripitaka and why he is standing here at all.
He does not remember any of that part. He remembers a nice custom that brought his parents together, he is pleased to find the same custom in a foreign country, and he says so out loud in a crowd. The novel lets him finish the thought before it does anything to him.
Around him the whole social order has come out to watch — scholars, farmers, workmen, merchants, the lettered and the unlettered, all shouting the same thing. It is a festival. Everybody is enjoying themselves. The chapter has arranged a large happy crowd for the express purpose of having something land in it.
The Line and the Hook. The chapter ends on a fishing image, and it is worth being precise about who is holding the rod. Not the king, who knows nothing. Not the princess in the palace, who is not the princess. The thing in the palace built a tower at a crossroads and waited for a particular man to walk past it, and the couplet says so: the hook has been in the water for some time.
What makes the ending land is the sequence of small choices before it. Tripitaka wanted his rescript stamped. The superintendent helpfully said the court was still sitting. Pilgrim suggested a look at the tower and produced a good argument for it. Tripitaka agreed. Not one of those decisions is foolish, and together they walk him under a tower with a woman on it who has been waiting a year.
And the last thing before the ball falls is the narrator's single-character wince. Ah. The novel does not often break in like that. It does it here because it has spent the whole chapter being fair to everybody — the good abbot, the good king, the good official, the clever monkey — and it can see what fairness is about to cost them.
The False Princess. The novel does something here it has done perhaps a dozen times in ninety-three chapters: it stops the story and tells the reader the answer. There is no suspense about who the princess is. We know before the ball is thrown, and we know it while Tripitaka is still standing in the crowd admiring the local customs.
That choice changes what the rest of the chapter is about. It cannot be about discovering the truth, because we have it. It is about watching a series of decent people — a fond king, a helpful official, a careful monk — behave perfectly reasonably and walk straight into a trap that was built to their measure a year in advance.
One detail does not fit, and the text leaves it unreconciled. The narrator says the abduction happened the year before last; the old abbot said the girl turned up at his temple exactly a year ago. Either she was somewhere else for a year, or one of the two is loose with dates. The novel does not say, and it is worth noticing rather than smoothing over.
They Have Hit a Monk. The single most consequential event in the last stretch of the novel is a ball rolling into a sleeve, and the chapter gives it eleven characters. There is no flash, no wind, no fiendish laughter. A young woman on a tower looks down, picks her moment, throws, and it lands.
What follows is pure crowd. Everyone on the tower shouts the same sentence twice; everyone in the street runs at the monk to grab the ball. The novel is very good at this — the disaster is not frightening, it is embarrassing and loud and physically dangerous in the way a football crowd is dangerous.
And Pilgrim's response is exactly right and completely useless. He makes himself ten metres tall and pulls a face, which scatters the crowd and does nothing whatever about the actual problem, because the actual problem is now sitting in his master's sleeve with fifty court women coming down the stairs to collect it.
What Has It to Do with Me?. The funniest exchange in the chapter happens about thirty seconds after the disaster, and it is a domestic squabble. A flying ball has just arranged Tripitaka's marriage, and his first move is to tell off the monkey. Pilgrim's reply is one of the great deadpan lines of the novel: it landed on your head and rolled into your sleeve, what has it to do with me?
It is also, technically, a lie by omission. Pilgrim proposed the outing, produced the argument for it, and overrode his master's objection — and then stands there pointing out that the ball is nobody's fault. The novel lets the joke run without commenting, which is how it usually handles Pilgrim being both right and shameless.
Then Tripitaka does the sensible thing and asks for a plan, and the tone changes in one line. He has stopped being a victim and started being a man with a monkey who is good at this. What Pilgrim proposes next is the cleverest scheme in the chapter, and it depends entirely on Tripitaka walking into the palace alone.
Leaning on the Marriage. Pilgrim's plan is the best thing anybody does in this chapter, and its cleverness is that it does nothing. He does not rescue his master, denounce the princess, or fight anyone. He tells Tripitaka to go along with the marriage far enough to be granted one small courtesy — a word with his disciples — which will put three demon-hunters in front of the throne with the false princess in the room.
It also depends on Tripitaka being able to act, which is not his strength. He has to walk into a palace, be pleasant to a woman he now knows is a fiend, and ask for nothing except a chat with his servants. The chapter is about to show him doing it very badly indeed.
Meanwhile the wedding machinery starts up and cannot be stopped. Palace women hustle him to the tower, the princess takes his hand, they board a carriage, a retinue forms, and a gate officer reports it up the chain before they arrive. From the ball landing to a formal report reaching the king takes about a hundred and fifty characters. Nobody has asked the monk anything yet.
A Pair Crying Long Life. The king's first instinct is to throw the monk out, and he is right. His second thought is that he does not know what his daughter wants, and that is the thought that costs him. Everything in this chapter that goes wrong goes wrong through somebody being considerate.
The line about the pair crying Long Life is the chapter's cleverest piece of phrasing and it is easy to miss because the edition does not set it off as verse. Two houses, the crooked and the straight, bowing side by side — and the reader knows which is which while everyone in the hall does not. The couplet is a joke that only works from outside the room.
Tripitaka, meanwhile, is doing the thing he always does under pressure: reciting his own credentials. The king asks a simple question about a ball and gets the continent, the emperor, the destination and the paperwork. It is not evasion so much as reflex. He has introduced himself this way in about forty countries.
A Thousand Li of Destiny on a Thread. Tripitaka's defence is legally sound and completely useless. He is a monk, he is a foreigner, he is under orders from another emperor, and he has somewhere to be. None of it touches the actual situation, which is that a father has watched his daughter choose and is not going to overrule her.
The king's reply is where the chapter's sympathy sits. He calls the monk a holy man of the Eastern Land, quotes a proverb about a thousand li of destiny on a thread, and explains that the date was chosen as auspicious. Every word is kind. He is handing a stranger his only child on the strength of a thrown ball and a good calendar day, and he means well by all of it.
The red thread deserves a moment. In the old story an old man sits under the moon with a book of marriages and a bag of red cord, and ties the ankles of two children who will one day marry no matter what stands between them. It is a lovely idea and it is being invoked here to bind a monk to a demon, by a father who cannot see either fact.
Marry a Cock and Follow the Cock. The princess wins the argument, and she wins it entirely on orthodox ground. She made a vow. She announced it to heaven and earth. The ball struck a holy monk, which proves a bond from a former life. To go back on it now would be impiety. There is no flaw in the reasoning and every word of it is false.
That is the chapter's real subject, and it is why the novel bothered to tell us who she was before the ball was thrown. A demon that fights can be fought. This one does not fight; it quotes proverbs, invokes karma, defers to its father, and gets everything it wants inside a hundred characters, in public, with the whole machinery of state nodding along.
And then the machinery closes. An astronomer is summoned to pick a date, a dowry is started, and an edict goes out to the empire. Between the ball leaving her hand and the announcement of a royal wedding, the chapter has spent about seven hundred characters. Tripitaka has not agreed to anything, and it has stopped mattering whether he does.
Pardon Me, Pardon Me. The king threatens to behead a holy monk for declining to marry his daughter, and the novel does not treat this as tyranny. It treats it as a father losing his temper. Two lines earlier he was quoting proverbs about the red thread of destiny; now he is calling for the guard, and in a few pages he will be perfectly reasonable again.
Tripitaka's collapse is total and instant, and it is worth being fair to him about it. He has no powers, no weapon and no allies in the room, he is forty-five years old, and a king has just promised to kill him. What he does under that pressure is remember the one instruction Pilgrim gave him and repeat it. It is not brave, but it is exactly what was needed.
The chapter has now put the same request in three mouths — the old abbot asking for the truth to be told apart, Pilgrim naming his plan, and Tripitaka asking for his disciples to be summoned. Each of them thinks he is asking for something different. All three are asking for the same door to be opened.
The Great Elixir Does Not Leak. The narrator stops the story to explain, in technical language, exactly what is at stake. The great elixir must not leak; all three treasures must stay whole. That is what the false princess wants from Tripitaka and it is why she wants him specifically — ten lifetimes of unbroken discipline stored in one body.
What is striking is the poem's second half. Having named a real supernatural danger, it does not offer a spell or a weapon. It says the Way is handed down but the practice is your own, that merit accumulates and blessing is heaven's business, and that the answer to craving is to stop craving. The remedy for a demon is ordinary self-discipline.
And it puts the same argument the chapter opened with, in almost the same words. The lyric at the start said the arrangement must be made from within, and that trouble begins with a thought. Two hundred lines later, with the trouble fully arrived, the poem says it again. The chapter is built as a circle and this is where it closes.
The Master Has Had Good Luck. This is the chapter's comic set piece and it works entirely on withheld information. Pilgrim knows the marriage is a trap, knows the trap is his own plan, and knows his brothers know none of it. So he comes home laughing and announces that Master has had good luck.
Two steps and a laugh, two steps and a laugh, all the way from the crossroads to the hostel. The novel spends six characters on it and the picture is unimprovable. It is also the clearest sign in the chapter of how much Pilgrim enjoys being the only one who understands the situation, which has been his defining pleasure since the first chapter.
And the story he tells is entirely true. Every fact in it is accurate and the shape is a lie. Eight Rules is about to react to the shape.
Three Mace of Silver for an Old Donkey. Eight Rules hears that his master has been forced into marriage with a stranger under threat of execution, and his reaction is jealousy. Not fear for Tripitaka, not suspicion of the princess — pure, unmixed regret that the ball did not hit him. The novel has spent ninety-three chapters establishing that this is exactly what he would say.
Sha Monk's reply is the best insult in the chapter and it works like a proverb: three mace of silver buys the worst donkey at the market, and the man who bought it boasts about his riding. It says everything about Eight Rules's self-assessment in eleven characters, and it is the third time in this chapter that the quiet one has shut him up.
Underneath the comedy, note what nobody in this room is doing. Not one of the three has asked whether Tripitaka is all right. Pilgrim knows and is not telling; Eight Rules is sulking; Sha Monk is scoring points. The master is standing in a throne room being fitted for a wedding, and his disciples are having an argument about a donkey.
Each Has a Point in Its Favour. The chapter's last argument is about whether ugly people have their own appeal, and Eight Rules wins it by quoting a proverb — coarse skin, strong bones, each has something to be said for it. It is a genuinely good line and he is entirely wrong to be using it about himself, which is the pattern of his entire existence.
That proverb hides the chapter's most instructive reading problem, and it is worth spelling out. The character in it means a gain or a merit — a noun. Everywhere else in the chapter the same character is a verb or a link between two verbs. The automatic system reads this one site the light way and all forty-seven others the full way, which is precisely backwards: the one it treats as the exception is the only one that is not.
Then Eight Rules takes Pilgrim's word about protecting his master and turns it into a joke about the wedding night, and Pilgrim loses his temper. The novel has been building to this for four hundred characters, and it is the last comic beat before the summons arrives.
Is It a Ghost or a Fiend?. The summons arrives and Pilgrim's plan is complete: three demon-hunters invited into a throne room by royal order, with the false princess in the building. He set this up below the tower, told his master exactly what to say, and has said nothing about it to his brothers, who are still arguing about whether ugliness has charm.
The officer who brings the summons is one of the chapter's small delights. He bows correctly, cannot look up, and mutters his way through a list of what Pilgrim might be — a ghost, a fiend, a thunder god, a night-stalker — while standing in front of him. The novel has a great fondness for competent officials being frightened out of their wits and carrying on anyway.
And there is a nice symmetry in it. The chapter opened with monks who could not stop a departing saint and ends with an official who cannot look at one. Nobody in India has been able to see what is actually in front of them from the moment the pilgrims arrived — which is the same failing that has kept a demon on the throne for a year.
No Room to Turn Aside. The chapter ends where every chapter ends, with a couplet and a promise, and this one is unusually direct about what is coming. A narrow road with no room to turn aside, and love turning to enmity. There is no suspense being manufactured — the novel told us who the princess was two thousand characters ago and now tells us how it will go.
What the chapter has actually done is harder than a fight. It arranged a catastrophe entirely out of good behaviour: a fond king, a helpful official, a careful monk, an abbot who could not turn a girl away, and a monkey clever enough to walk his master under the wrong tower at the wrong hour. Nobody in it does anything wicked except the thing everyone takes for a princess.
And it leaves two people exactly where it found them. A young woman is still locked in an outbuilding at Gold-Spread Monastery, pretending to be mad so the monks will leave her alone. Another is still on a throne in the capital, planning a wedding. The chapter has moved everybody else a long way and neither of them at all — which is the work the next one has to do.