Literature - Journey to the West

Today, I logged in to Fossforus's blog just to say thanks for helping me with a meme which I had posted in Beautiful World. There is a little monkey king there that reminded me of the famous Monkey King or more popularly known as Sung Wu Kung to Chinese children, from Journey to the West (Traditional Chinese: 西遊記)which is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. Originally published anonymously in the 1590s during the Ming Dynasty, the authorship has been ascribed to the scholar Wú Chéng'ēn since the 20th century. The story is supposed to be a pseudo-historical account of a monk (Xuanzang) who went to India in the 7th century to seek Buddhist scriptures to bring back to China. In real life, Xuanzang (born c. 602 - 664) was a monk at Jingtu Temple in late-Sui Dynasty and early-Tang Dynasty Chang'an and he had left for India because of the poor quality of Chinese translations of Buddhist scripture at the time . In the novel, Xuanzang was assisted by his three protectors who were also his disciples — namely Sūn Wùkōng, Zhū Bājiè and Shā Wùjìng — together with a dragon prince who acts as Xuánzàng's horse mount.The stories of Monkey are popular to Chinese all over the world and to Korean and Japanese children too and today, they have become part of the repertoire of the Chinese Opera, TV series, and comic books.

Characters from Journey to the West....