The Journey to the West Illustration In 629 AD, Xuanzang, a monk of the Tang Dynasty, went to India to study Buddhist teachings in violation of the provisions of the imperial court prohibiting people from traveling westward without authorization. 16 years later, he returned to China in 644 and wrote a report to Emperor Taizong. Emperor Taizong wrote a letter asking him to dictate what he had seen and heard in the Western Regions. Xuanzang dictated it himself, and his disciples argued and wrote The Record of the Western Regions of Datang. After Xuanzang's death, his other two disciples, Hui Li and Yan Xun, compiled Xuanzang's life and Journey to the West into The biography of Master Sanzang. In order to publicize his master's achievements, they deified Xuanzang in the book 1 1, believing that this was the beginning of a fairy tale about a journey to the west. Since then, the story of learning from the scriptures has spread in the society, and the color of immortals is getting stronger and stronger.
In many records of the late Tang and Five Dynasties, there were stories of going west to learn from the scriptures. The existing murals of Xuanzang in Dunhuang Grottoes were made in the early years of Xixia, and the image of a staff-bearer has appeared. In the Southern Song Dynasty, some walkers had already turned into Untitled Scholar, calling themselves "84,000 bronze-headed monkey king" and "God of sand". The Southern Opera in Song and Yuan Dynasties includes The Monk in the Chen Guangrui River, and Wu Changling's zaju Tang Sanzang's Journey to the West has four apprentices. The zaju "Erlang God Locked the Great Sage in the Sky" and Journey to the West at the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty describe the origin of the Monkey King. "Journey to the West and Pinghua" was mentioned in the Korean language textbook "An Interpretation of Proverbs about Park at the Same Time" in the early Ming Dynasty, which summarized and repeated a passage "The car was late against the country", which was very similar to The Journey to the West's forty-sixth chapter. The Yongle Dadian in Ming Dynasty (volume 13 139) contains Dreaming of Dragons, which is basically the same as The Journey to the West's volume 10.
[Editor] Significance and influence
Many images in The Journey to the West, such as the Monkey King and Pig Bajie, are almost household names in China. The Journey to the West systematically reflected China's thought system of integrating Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, combined the Taoist immortal system of heaven, earth and sea with the Buddhist western heaven, and at the same time carried out the Confucian thought that "there are no unfaithful and unfilial immortals in the world". Journey to the West put forward the bold statement that "the emperor will take turns to go to court next year and come to my home". At the same time, the description of the immortal system in this book is the epitome of the political society of the Ming Dynasty in which the author lived.
The Journey to the West, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin and A Dream of Red Mansions are listed as the classical Four Great Classical Novels of China. Feng Menglong called Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Journey to the West and Jin Ping Mei "the Four Musts". Edenburg, an authority on contemporary French comparative literature, said: "This kind of person who doesn't read The Journey to the West is just like not reading Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. It is bold to talk about novel theory."