Buddhism in the Classic Chinese Novel Journey to the West: Teaching Two Episodes
Roberta E. Adams

The Pilgrim Characters
Pig (Pigsy)
Also called:

• Zhu Ganglie ( Chu Kang-lieh) or “Iron-haired Pig”
• Zhu Bajie ( Chu Pa-chieh) or “Eight Prohibitions Pig”
• Zhu Wuneng ( Chu Wu-neng) or “Pig Awakened to Power” (his name in religion)

Note: Names are given in pinyin (Jenner translation) and Wade-Giles (Waley/Yu translations), plus any alternate names used in translations. Note that in Chinese practice, the family name comes first, then the personal name, as in Chen Xuanzang, where Chen is the family name.

Tripitaka and Monkey encounter Pig in Ch. 18, after the farmer Gao Cai asks for help in ridding the family of an “evil spirit” who has married and isolated his twenty-year old daughter Blue Orchid, and who is eating them out of house and home. Monkey subdues Pig and learns that he is the earthly reincarnation of Marshal Tian Peng (Water God of the Heavenly Reeds), the heavenly field marshal in charge of the Milky Way, who was banished from Heaven for his drunkenness and his attempted seductions of the moon maiden. On his way to his banishment on earth, his spirit loses its way and enters the womb of a sow, so he is born with a face of a wild boar; however, he maintains his divine nature. When Guanyin converts Pig to Buddhism and asks him to wait for the pilgrim, she gives him the name ZhuWuneng, Pig Awakened to Power (Ch. 8). In spite of his huge appetite, Pig is a good Buddhist vegetarian. The Bodhisattva instructs him never to eat the “five stinking foods and the three forbidden meats—wild goose, dog, and snake-fish” ( Jenner, Ch. 19, 449). Hearing this, Tripitaka laughs and gives him the additional name Bajie, Eight Prohibitions. Yu (Ch. 8, note 32) explains that the five forbidden viands may be spices—leeks, garlic, onion, green onion, and scallion—or meats—horse, dog, bullock, goose, and pigeon.

Accoutrements: Pig fights with a Supremely Precious Gold-imbued Nine-Pronged Magic Rake, more indecorously called a muckrake, a humorous reference to his earthly occupation as a farmer. He is portrayed as corpulent, with a pig’s face.

Characteristics/Symbolism: If Monkey is the mind, Pig is the flesh. He has a sensual nature, with a lust for life. He is clumsy, greedy, lazy, selfish, lustful, and simpleminded. Whenever discouraged by Tripitaka’s apparent death or disappearance, he suggests they split up the luggage and go home. He misses his wife and is easily distracted by demons who appear as lovely young women. He is jealous of Monkey’s influence with Tripitaka and capable of slander and subterfuge. However, his brute strength in battle is an enormous help in fighting demons. He remains loyal to Guanyin, keeping his promise to help protect the monk, and he is rather easily won back to the community. Much humor in the novel arises in the conflicts between Monkey and Pig. In some Buddhist allegory, the pig’s skill at rooting in the earth is equated to the power of rooting out the ego, but in this work, Pig’s ego remains expansive.

Works Cited:

Jenner, W. J. F., trans. Journey to the West. Wu Cheng’en. Intro. Shi Changyu. 4 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2001 (1997-1986).

Yu, Anthony C., trans. and ed. The Journey to the West. 4 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.