Tower of Myriad Mirrors: A Supplement to Journey to the West (Michigan Classics in Chinese Studies) (19 page)

King P
ramit
's troops were fierce. They charged headlong into the T'ang Priest's lines and killed Little Moon King. Then turning, they cut off the head of the T'ang Priest.

Confusion reigned. There was much killing amongst the four armies, and Monkey didn't know what to do. He could only watch, spellbound. He saw the black banners fall in amongst the ranks of the purple banners. Purple banners lay across green banners. One green banner flew into the purple banners. Purple banners marched into the ranks of the yellow banners. Yellow banners angled into the black
banners. A large black banner
⁴
fell from the sky onto the yellow banners, killing yellow bannermen. Yellow bannermen rushed into the ranks of the green banners and seized several green banners, which were snatched away in turn by purple bannermen. Purple bannermen killed their own men. Several hundred purple banners fell into the blood and were dyed lichee-red. These were gathered by yellow bannermen into their ranks. Green bannermen marched into the troops under black banners and killed a number of them. Several small black banners flew into the air and fell onto a pine tree, while a million men in the ranks of yellow banners fell into a pit. A hundred small yellow command banners flew in amongst the small green command banners, and they blended into the color of duck's-head green. Sixteen or seventeen small purple command banners fell in with the green banners, and the green banner troops threw them into the air. They fell onto the troops of the black banners and disappeared.

Now Monkey was enraged. He couldn't control himself.

1
P
ramit
is Sanskrit for “perfection.” In Mahayana Buddhism a bodhisattva attains six (or ten in some schools) P
ramit
s as he works to achieve Nirvana.

2
In the Chinese transliteration for
P
ramit
, the character used to render the syllable “mi” has the intrinsic meaning of “honey,” while the character
t'ang
in T'ang dynasty is homophonous with the character meaning “sugar.” King P
ramit
is punning on these associations.

3
To this point, King P
ramit
is recounting the episode that takes place in chapters 59-61 of
Journey to the West
, the antecedent of the present narrative.

4
Large and small banners denote high and low ranks.