The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 2 (103 page)

2
. Zhang Daoling:
. Master alchemist and Daoist theocrat of the second century CE (fl. 156), he had acquired so many followers that he was able to establish for a brief period a semiautonomous government at the borders of Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces. See entry on “Zhang Daoling” in ET 2: 1222–23. The XYJ text has another typographical error here by printing
ling
for
ling
.

3
. Eight nativity characters:
bazi
, eight graphs, made up of the various combinations of the stems and branches, which designate the hour, date, month, and year of the person’s birth.

4
. Hāritī: Guizimu
, the mother of demons, a
rāk
ṣ
asī
under a vow to devour children but converted to Buddhism. She became a guardian of nunneries and protector of children.

5
. Fu Xi: as noted in
chapter 35
, Fu Xi was a legendary monarch of high antiquity and the husband of Nüwa in mythology. Among his major contributions to Chinese culture was his share in the discovery of the eight trigrams (
bagua
) on the back of a tortoise that became the basis for the compilation and discourse of the
Classic of Change
. King Wen, of the preceding line in the poem, was also credited in legends with the development of the use of the trigrams for divination and for plastromancy. The Zeng Yuan of the preceding line may not be the son of the famous disciple of Confucius, Zeng Shen, but a Song official (full name, Zeng Yuanzhong
or
) and a reputed expert on the calendar and the
Classic of Change
. For further discussion of plastromancy and related subjects, see
The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C.
, ed. Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 852–60.

6
. Uproot one hair: Guanyin’s remarks are built on repeated puns. This particular observation about Wukong exploits the common Chinese idiom for extreme stinginess,
yimao buba
. The term “Goodly Wealth” in the following sentence is actually a pun on the same term for “Skilled in Wealth,”
shancai
, but Guanyin’s sentence alters the diction and syntax, and thus the meaning as well, of
shan
from
shanyu
(skilled in) to
shanliang
(good or virtuous). The punning of her sentence is skillfully double-edged:
shancai nanshe
asserts literally that “it will be difficult for me to part with Shancai [name of the dragon girl] in order to expend my good wealth on you [Wukong].”