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A Catalog of the Monkey King’s Magic Powers and Skills
I am happy to announce that I've finished my 177-page catalog of Sun Wukong's powers from all 100 chapters of Journey to the West. Fans of Lego Monkie Kid and Black Myth: Wukong, fanfiction writers, and artists will certainly find it useful.
In honor of the forthcoming video game Black Myth: Wukong (August 20, 2024), I have completed a catalog of Sun Wukong’s magic powers and ski
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Instead of gold, would it be more accurate for the monkey king’s cloud to be purple? 13th century and zaju play as examples before the final version. Unless the cloud is described specifically as gold in the final I don’t remember
I don't believe the 13th-century JTTW mentions the color. I'm not sure about zaju.
The standard 1592 edition sometimes describes Monkey's cloud as “auspicious" (xiangyun, 祥雲) or having a "luminosity" (xiangguang, 祥光). Such clouds/lights are commonly associated with the five colors (wuse, 五色). Chapter 88 makes this explicit:
Marvelous Great Sage! With a loud whistle he somersaulted right up into midair, his two feet treading the auspicious cloud of five colors. At about three hundred paces above ground, he let loose his rod to make [the martial arts moves] Sprinkling Flowers over the Top and the Yellow Dragon Entwining the Body. Up and down he moved, circling left and right. In the beginning his person and the rod so complemented each other that they seemed, as the adage had it, like flowers added to brocade. By and by even the person disappeared, and all one could see was a sky full of twirling rods! (Wu & Yu, 2012, vol. 4, pp. 196-197) 好大聖，唿哨一聲，將觔斗一抖，兩隻腳踏著五色祥雲，起在半空，離地約有三百步高下。把金箍棒丟開個「撒花蓋頂」，「黃龍轉身」，一上一下，左旋右轉，起初時人與棒似錦上添花；次後來不見人，只見一天棒滾。
Source:
Wu, C., & Yu, A. C. (2012). The Journey to the West (Vols. 1-4) (Rev. ed.). Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.
Here I present part of the conclusion from my recent article exploring the origin of Sun Wukong’s cloud somersault.
https://journeytothewestresearch.wordpress.com/2019/12/30/the-origin-of-sun-wukongs-cloud-somersault/
The Monkey King first learns the cloud somersault during the early days of his Daoist training under the Sage Subhuti. It enables him to travel 108,000 li in a single leap, making him much faster than the cloud soaring of other transcendents. While this skill shares affinities with the fleet clouds of immortals from Daoist hagiography, Sun’s somersault has a deep connection to Chan Buddhism. The vast distance that it travels is symbolic of the “ten evils and eight wrongs”, two sets of spiritual hindrances from the Platform Sutra said to keep the Buddha’s paradise out of reach. Only those who achieve enlightenment can arrive there in a flash, thus making Wukong’s cloud an apt metaphor for instant enlightenment. This suggests the greater speed of the somersault can be read as a further metaphor for the potency of Buddhism over Daoism.
Wukong’s habit of jumping into the heavens differs from the way other immortals rise by stamping their feet. This unorthodox method may have naturalistic or even religious influences. The suggestion that it is based on somersaulting monkeys from Chinese vaudevillian street performances is alluring given their natural gift for acrobatics. Some scholars champion a foreign origin by pointing to the leaping prowess of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman. But this could simply be a passing similarity based on common behavioral traits among monkeys. The jumping may also have ties to the Buddhist saint Maudgalyayana, who is portrayed in a famed 9th/10th-century tale leaping into the air to ride his magic alms bowl between heaven and hell. Elements from his story would come to influence the 13th-century precursor of Journey to the West, as well as the Ming edition of the novel, adding support for his possible influence.
