Did Hanuman inspire China’s Sun Wukong? In all probability yes, says B R Deepak

(Left) A Hanuman statue at Samarth Shrushti, Sajjangad Rd, Satara, Maharashtra. (Right) A man dressed as Sun Wukong in Vietnam, which draws a lot from Chinese culture. Photos from iStock. Collage by Ajit Bajaj/CSE

For most Indians, Lord Hanuman is the epitome of several things: Strength, courage, loyalty, selflessness and devotion.

But Hanuman may have also inspired one of the most important figures in Chinese folklore and culture.

Sun Wukong, the monkey king, is a character that appears in Journey to the West, a classic Ming Period novel. It is based on the journey of the famous Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang (also known as Huien Tsang), who came to India to study Buddhism during the Tang Dynasty.

Since the novel came out in the 16th century, it has inspired a plethora of art, poetry, literature and music. Scholars have attributed its success largely to the character of Sun Wukong.

Down To Earth caught up with B R Deepak, Professor of Chinese Studies at the Centre for Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and spoke with him about the connections between Hanuman and Sun Wukong. Edited excerpts:

Rajat Ghai (RG): How are simians viewed in Chinese culture? How different is this perception from the Indian one?

 

B R Deepak (BRD): The monkey has been depicted in Chinese culture for thousands of years. In the ‘Oracle Bone Script’, the oldest extant form of Chinese writing, we find the character for monkey: ‘Nao’ or ‘Kui’, which referred to a legendary demon with a human face and the body of a monkey or ape. I think it is this legendary demon which later became Wuzhiqi, the legendary water goblin of the Huai River in northern China.

The monkey is the ninth of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. It is a symbol of cleverness, dynamism, energy and even prowess.

The character for ‘monkey’ in Chinese today — ‘Hou’ — interestingly also is used as the term for ‘high official’. Imperial China was one of the first countries to have a civil service examination (Keju), which was later exported to other countries.

However, the most important facet of the monkey’s relevance in Chinese culture is Sun Wukong, a character that appears first in The Story of Grand Tang Master Sangzang’s Pilgrimage for Buddhist Scriptures, a work from the Southern Song Dynasty, and subsequently in Master Sanzang of Tang and The Westward Pilgrimage of Sanzang of Tang written by Wu Changling, a Zaju playwright during the Yuan Dynasty, and Journey to the West, written by Yang Ne from the late Yuan. On the basis of these source materials Wu Cheng’en, created a more popular protagonist in his classic Journey to the West during the Ming Dynasty.

According to this novel, Sun Wukong had mastered 72 methods of transformation. He was able to lift a metal stick 6,750 kilograms in weight. He was able to travel 108,000 Li (roughly 54,000 kilometres) in a single somersault.

In Journey to the West, there are also various stories related to the Ramayana.

In India, Lord Hanuman is associated with religion and spirituality, which is a departure between him and Sun Wukong.

Of course, he also represents the core values of Indian civilisation: Service beyond self; courage; devotion; loyalty; filial piety, etc.

These values are also similar to Confucian traits or the core values of Chinese civilisation. That is why they also find a certain appeal in Chinese society.

RG: When did Sun Wukong first appear in Chinese folklore? Was it after Xuanzang’s phenomenal journey to India? Do we have a date?

BRD: To be very frank, we do not have an exact date. However, I would disagree with the date having any connection with Xuanzang’s journey — definitely the story but not the date. In fact, it could be much earlier.

If you look at the research conducted by Sinologists and scholars of Chinese studies, one can say that Indian stories and literature started travelling to China much before Buddhism itself did. However, we do not have a record. But in the case of Buddhism, we do.

For instance, the dissemination of the Ramayana from India to China occurred at the same time as the eastward spread of Brahminism and Buddhism. Three Jatakas (tales about the Buddha’s previous births/incarnations) — Dasaratha Jataka, Mahakapi Jataka and Shambuka Jataka — were translated into Chinese during the third century Common Era (CE). These were the earliest texts that disseminated the knowledge of the Ramayana to China. Hence, we can deduce that if the Ramayana travelled to China, certainly Hanuman did too.

Second, there are various other sources, usually texts translated into Chinese by Indian monks. For examples, there is the translation of Biography of Vasubandhu by an Indian monk, Paramartha from Ujjain. It mentions about how a person mistakenly recites the story of Sri Rama, instead of reciting a Buddhist sutra. Similarly, the Buddhacharitra, which was translated into Chinese during the 5th century CE and the Mahavibhasa Sutra, which was translated by Xuanzang during the Tang Period (7th Century CE). Both of these also have mentions of the Ramayana.

Xuanzang’s own travelogue about his journey to India, known in English as The Great Tang Records of the Western Regions, also mentions the Ramayana in the Gandharan cities of Purushapura (modern-day Peshawar) and Pushkalavati (modern-day Charsadda in Pakistan). There is also the Lankavatara Sutra narrating the story of the Ramayana.

All these Buddhist texts deal with Lord Ram and stories from the Ramayana. Also, many Indians do not know that the Dai, a minority nationality in China’s southwest Yunnan province, were the first community inside China to assimilate the Ramayana. Their version is called the Langka Sip Ho. Its storyline and characters are similar to the Valmiki Ramayana. Of course, the setting, environment and geography is the Yunnan province. Its dissemination, however, could be at a later date. I believe the Ramayana travelled here upland from either the Assam-Burma route or the sea route via southeast Asia. The other sources I mentioned travelled from the Central Asian Silk Road to China.

Lu Xun, whom (Chairman) Mao Zedong called the most progressive writer of 20th century China, believed that Sun Wukong evolved from Wuzhiqi. Lu Xun, in his A Brief History of Chinese Fiction, wrote that such legends about a supernatural creature had been circulating since the Song and Yuan (10th and 13th Centuries respectively) dynasties. It was only during the Ming Period that they crystallised into Sun Wukong, the character of Wu Cheng’en’s book. As a result, the water goblin myth was buried and a completely new character took its place.

Soon after this, Hu Shi, one of the tallest intellectuals in China, in his textual research on Journey to the West, refuted Lu Xun’s point of view. He said: “I have always suspected that this magical monkey is not a domestic product but an Indian import.”

RG: Is the jury out on whether Hanuman inspired Sun Wukong?

BRD: According to my reading of Chinese scholarship, there are three theories regarding the origins of Sun Wukong. One is the ‘local product’ hypothesis propounded by Lu Xun. He says Sun Wukong is based on Wuzhiqi, which in turn, is grounded in even more ancient Chinese myths.

The second is the ‘foreign product’ theory and it is propounded by Hu Shi. He says Sun Wukong has come to China from India. Ji Xianlin and other Indologists in China also believe Sun Wukong has been imported from India. His research “Ramayana in China” clearly advocates this point of view.

There are also those who believe in the ‘hybrid’ hypothesis. Scholars like Liu Anwu try to strike a balance between the earlier two theories and say Sun Wukong is a composite character influenced by Hanuman as well as local myths.

But if you go through Journey to the West, you would see that the ‘foreign product’ theory has stronger claims over Sun Wukong. Liu Anwu, a Chinese Indologist, has dedicated two chapters titled “Rescuing the kidnapped wife — Rama’s story in the Journey to the West”, and “A Comparison of the Curse Mantra and other Mantras — Hindu Mythology and Journey to the West” in one of his works to prove this point by referring to a mass of original sources. He has established that various descriptions of Sun Wukong in the Journey to the West are very consistent or similar to the Rama story in the Buddhist sutras and the great epic Ramayana itself.

RG: What does the Hanuman-Sun Wukong similarity tell us about the power of oral story-telling, something that was so important in times past?

BRD: Story-telling was an important tool to propagate one’s ideas, and more importantly, to let the other side absorb them.

You may want to export your ideas to other people. But would they be receptive to them? Story-telling came in handy here. One could make their ideas acceptable by making them exotic and interesting.

It were the stories in India’s epics, especially the Ramayana, that made them so attractive not only to the general masses in India but also abroad.

Many of these stories were adapted by Buddhism to make them appealing and receptive in China, especially when it faced resistance from local philosophies such as Confucianism and Taoism.

There was another factor at play here. In India, the temples were the centres of power, wealth and influence. In Imperial China, it was the palace and the emperor that everything revolved around.

Classical Buddhist tradition talks about the Buddhist shramanas or bhikkus (ascetics) not paying obeisance to the emperor. This contradiction was put to rest, and Xuanzang says that “How will you be able to establish Dharma if you do not depend on the emperor?”

Confucianism places great importance on family ties. Gautama Buddha, on the other hand, renounced his family and took to asceticism. This was another contradiction that was resolved by creating sutras on filial piety, etc. This essentially was the sinicisation of Buddhism.

That is when Buddhist monks may have used the Jataka tales (with their stories from the Hindu epics). These stories played an important role in demolishing negative perceptions regarding Buddhism and helped popularise it and win it royal patronage.

Stories about supernatural creatures such as Sun Wukong were so exotic that the Chinese people were completely mesmerised and they received them in good faith.

RG: Can Hanuman-Sun Wukong be a bridge between India and China?

BRD: Certainly. Even though Sun Wukong is now a completely Chinese product, its origins are Indian and people across the world know this.

This is one of the most powerful representations of people-to-people exchanges. Even today, there are 35,000 words of Indian, mostly Sanskrit origin, in the Chinese language. All this was possible through the circulatory movement of idea, people, technologies and commodities. This resulted in a civilisational exchange of ideas between various polities especially, India and China for over 2,000 years.

Today, when bilateral relations are at their lowest ebb, especially after the Galwan clash, both countries should promote friendly, civilisational ties, as we did in the past two millennia. There is a need to promote such dialogue and understanding for a better future.

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