strength. These two themes run persistently through Tower. Sexual innuendo abounds at a party with the lady Green Pearl, and quite specifically in Monkey's poetic line, “I regret that my heart followsclouds and rain in flight.” “Clouds and rain” is a timeworn literary euphemism for sex. As Beautiful Lady Yü, Monkey tries to avoid bedding with the warrior Hsiang Yü, but this episode and others recall the scene in Journey to the West where Monkey drinks shoulder-to-shoulder with Lady Rakshas. When the enraged Monkey beats a little monkey 1 who has reported how he met a young girl and got drunk with her, he is plainly punishing himself.
In another projection of the Lady Rakshas “affair,” King Pramitexplains that he is the son of Monkey and Lady Rakshas, and Monkey becomes aligned against his own offspring in the chaotic Battle of the Banners. As the climax of the novel, this battle is in keeping with Ch'an essentials, which teach that when one's perplexity reaches its highest pitch, psychic energies have become concentrated enough to thrust one into new awareness.
This same battle is the culmination of the recourse-to-strength theme as well, for Monkey again assumes the three-headed, six-armed form he used in his rebellion against Heaven. Monkey likes to rely on massive response, and this is why he looks to weapons like the Mountain-removing Bell and the Banana-leaf Fan rather than working through the subtler nuances of his predicaments. Such devices would make the westward journey easy and allow Monkey to avoid the very trials that give the allegorical pilgrimage its meaning. Ultimately, Monkey is not required to abandon his use of force, but to ensure that it is steered toward attaining Buddhist objectives. The story ends, after all, with his smashing of the Ch'ing Fish demon in its guise of a young acolyte who has offered to follow the pilgrims to the West. His act of striking down the acolyte “without a second thought” is an example of intuitively appropriate action in the Ch'an sense. The Ch'ing Fish is Monkey's mirror image—born at the same time and as evil as Monkey is good—so slaying this demon emancipates Monkey's mind from the grip of illusion. It is a violent act, but as Tung Yüeh notes in his “Answers to Questions” (see Appendix ), “In killing the demon of desire, one must be prepared to cut it in half with one stroke.”
If a Buddhist reading of The Tower of Myriad Mirrors seems most consonant with the author's overt design, there is also a school ofinterpretation comprised of such modern Chinese critics as Liu Ta-chieh and Han Chüeh, who view the novel as a disguised attack on the alien Manchus and the Chinese who served them. They insist that Ch'ing Fish, the key demon in the story, is meant to call to mind the name of the Manchu dynasty rather than the homophone that means “desire.” Though this reading relies upon the probably erroneous belief that the novel was written in retrospect of the Manchu seizure of China, it suggests noteworthy possibilities for interpretation.
The first name Nurhachi chose for his Manchu dynasty was Later Chin, adopted in 1616. Tung Yüeh may well have had this name in mind when he depicted the interrogation and torture of Ch'in Kuei, a man popularly believed to have sold out the twelfth-century Sung court in favor of the first Chin dynasty, which was, like the Manchu court, of non-Han origin. The Manchus changed their dynastic title to Ch'ing in 1636, so that if the novel were indeed written in 1640, the Ch'ing dynasty might well be imbedded in the Ch'ing Fish. In this light it is significant that a smell that offends Monkey when he meets the New Ancient in Shantung Province comes from the Tartars “right next door.” If the Manchus were still in their homeland, “next door” to the north, then invasion remained at least an ominous prospect, though not an accomplished fact.
There is a sense of urgency in the New Ancient's
In another projection of the Lady Rakshas “affair,” King Pramitexplains that he is the son of Monkey and Lady Rakshas, and Monkey becomes aligned against his own offspring in the chaotic Battle of the Banners. As the climax of the novel, this battle is in keeping with Ch'an essentials, which teach that when one's perplexity reaches its highest pitch, psychic energies have become concentrated enough to thrust one into new awareness.
This same battle is the culmination of the recourse-to-strength theme as well, for Monkey again assumes the three-headed, six-armed form he used in his rebellion against Heaven. Monkey likes to rely on massive response, and this is why he looks to weapons like the Mountain-removing Bell and the Banana-leaf Fan rather than working through the subtler nuances of his predicaments. Such devices would make the westward journey easy and allow Monkey to avoid the very trials that give the allegorical pilgrimage its meaning. Ultimately, Monkey is not required to abandon his use of force, but to ensure that it is steered toward attaining Buddhist objectives. The story ends, after all, with his smashing of the Ch'ing Fish demon in its guise of a young acolyte who has offered to follow the pilgrims to the West. His act of striking down the acolyte “without a second thought” is an example of intuitively appropriate action in the Ch'an sense. The Ch'ing Fish is Monkey's mirror image—born at the same time and as evil as Monkey is good—so slaying this demon emancipates Monkey's mind from the grip of illusion. It is a violent act, but as Tung Yüeh notes in his “Answers to Questions” (see Appendix ), “In killing the demon of desire, one must be prepared to cut it in half with one stroke.”
If a Buddhist reading of The Tower of Myriad Mirrors seems most consonant with the author's overt design, there is also a school ofinterpretation comprised of such modern Chinese critics as Liu Ta-chieh and Han Chüeh, who view the novel as a disguised attack on the alien Manchus and the Chinese who served them. They insist that Ch'ing Fish, the key demon in the story, is meant to call to mind the name of the Manchu dynasty rather than the homophone that means “desire.” Though this reading relies upon the probably erroneous belief that the novel was written in retrospect of the Manchu seizure of China, it suggests noteworthy possibilities for interpretation.
The first name Nurhachi chose for his Manchu dynasty was Later Chin, adopted in 1616. Tung Yüeh may well have had this name in mind when he depicted the interrogation and torture of Ch'in Kuei, a man popularly believed to have sold out the twelfth-century Sung court in favor of the first Chin dynasty, which was, like the Manchu court, of non-Han origin. The Manchus changed their dynastic title to Ch'ing in 1636, so that if the novel were indeed written in 1640, the Ch'ing dynasty might well be imbedded in the Ch'ing Fish. In this light it is significant that a smell that offends Monkey when he meets the New Ancient in Shantung Province comes from the Tartars “right next door.” If the Manchus were still in their homeland, “next door” to the north, then invasion remained at least an ominous prospect, though not an accomplished fact.
There is a sense of urgency in the New Ancient's
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