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Literary Review
Parables for our times
RAVI VYAS
The world is like the impression left by the telling of a story.
Yogavasistha, Kashmiri poem circa eighth and 13th centuries AD.
LIFE, as the most ancient of all metaphors, is a journey; hence all good writing, in a sense, is travel writing. Conventionally, the journey is out and spatial, a kind of Melvillean journey, like Moby Dick. The purpose of the journey is to ``discover the past'', a new world away from hearth and home and social convention. But there is another journey, which is a journey inwards and across time, rather than across space. What's left behind in the interior journey is the objective self, and in the journey across time, it's the present that is left behind. We look into the past and the future, the mind swings back and forth from one extreme to another like a pendulum's swing in search for the point where the ``truth'' or the true self lies. The interior monologue then becomes what could be called a social version of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle because of the fallibility of the observer who is unable to figure out the point where the truth lies — in the perpendicular mean or at an angle, nearer one extreme than another.
But there is no real dichotomy between the two journeys — both examine life's fits and starts and the contingency of things like the Chinese classic, Wu Ch'êng-Ên's Monkey does in a string of parables. Tripitaka, or the three baskets into which the teachings of the Buddha are divided, is characterised here as a real person, better known to us as the Chinese pilgrim, Hsuan Tsang. He lived in the seventh Century AD and Tripitaka's pilgrimage to India became the subject of a whole cycle of fantastic legends. From the third Century onwards, these legends were constantly represented on the Chinese stage to inspire the great classic in Chinese literature, Journey to the West translated into English as the Monkey.
In fact and in fiction, Hsuan Tsang was a great scholar, renowned for his accurate translations of important Sanskrit texts he took back to China. He was a devotee of Buddha who went in search not merely of Buddhist scriptures but to make offerings to the footprints of the teacher. Hsuan Tsang's pilgrimage is considered one of the most remarkable journeys in the world, all the more so because he returned safely in 645 AD. But in Monkey he is portrayed not as a heroic traveller but as a pious and cowardly monk who has to be rescued every step in his pilgrimage through life by the magical monkey and the Buddhist goddess of compassion. This happens because when Hsuan Tsang and his companions are setting out to return to China, they notice that the scrolls of Buddhist scriptures they have been given are blank. Hsuan Tsang is told that the blank scrolls are the true teachings but if he likes he could add some texts of his own. In other words, life is a blank slate on which you have to do the writing on your own, perhaps with some help from friends like the monkey.
All narrative forms of expression — iterature, law, history, biography, journalism and so on — finally turn out to be, more or less, highly formalised genres of gossip. Who did what to whom, when, where, how and why, what does it mean and finally what is done about it? Monkey is all this and more as it tells many tales at once, or rather one story after another because life consists of a series of events, the last of which can change the meaning of the whole. It is the final meaning that matters which is provided by the monkey from the Buddhist scriptures.
Monkey is many things rolled into one — folklore, allegory, religion, history, anti-bureaucratic satire and of course pure poetry. All these elements are fused into one another like a mix of Panchtantra, Kathasaritsagara, the Buddhist Jataka tales, the Hindu and Jaina Puranas or refined versions of simple popular tales. It is difficult to separate the elements that constitute each story that, in turn, are meshed into the succeeding one. But central to all of them is the idea that the hierarchy in Heaven is a replica of the government on earth or that a people's gods are the replicas of its earthly rulers. The bureaucrats of the story are the saints in Heaven, which can be taken as a satire both against religion as much as against bureaucracy. Heaven is simply the whole bureaucratic system transferred bag and baggage to that part of Heaven where God was supposed to be. Heaven and earth are one; there is no ambiguity.
As regards the allegory, it is clear that the four main characters around whom the stories revolve symbolise the diverse elements of human nature. Tripitaka stands for the common man blundering through the difficulties of life, Monkey is the genius who sees through the fiddle, tells you what the game is all about and how to go about it, Pigsy is all brawn and muscle, while Sandy is mysterious, who remains ill-defined and colourless, one of those nondescripts who flit in and out of our lives.
Like all folktales, everything happens under a spell or a metamorphosis, where individuals plucked from a state of mind are carried away by predestined loves or are bewitched; where sudden disappearances, monstrous transformations occur, where right has to be discerned from wrong and where paths bristling with obstacles lead to a happiness held captive by ``dragons''. Or that no bondage was worse than the hope of happiness and that the price of happiness was never happy. Happiness was merely a creation of the mind and nothing more.
Taken together, Monkey offers in its repetitive and constantly varying examination of human vicissitudes, a catalogue of the potential destinies of men and women, especially for that stage in life when the future is worked out — that is, youth, beginning with birth which itself foreshadows the future; then, the departure from home and finally the trials of growing up, and the attainment of maturity and wisdom. This sketch contains everything: the arbitrary division of human beings into kings and poor people; the persecution of the innocent and their subsequent vindication; love unrecognised when first encountered and then no sooner experienced than lost; the common fate of one's existence predetermined by complex and unknown forces.
Monkey says this complexity pervades one's entire existence and forces one to struggle to free oneself to determine one's fate; at the same time we can liberate ourselves if we can liberate other people, for, this is a necessary condition for one's own liberation. There must be a fundamental fidelity to a goal, values fundamental to salvation and triumph. There must also be beauty, a grace that can be masked by the humble, ugly guise of a monkey or a pig. Above all there must be present the infinite possibilities of mutation, the unifying element in everything: men, beasts, plants and things.
Wu Ch'eng-En's Monkey, it is said, was Mao Tse Tung's constant companion in the Long March (1934-35) when the Chinese communist party moved from its scattered bases in south China to Yanan in the north that nearly destroyed it as a fighting force. The fact that it survived — a triumph of will over overwhelming odds, including dissension within the marchers' ranks — turned the episode into one of the great victories and defining myths of the Communist movement. Mao and the party cadres had used the stories in Monkey to keep the pack together, and the rest is of course history. And central to all the stories was the essence of Buddhist scriptures spoken by the Monkey:
What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind.
I will endure words that hurt in silent peace as the strong elephant endures in battle arrows sent by the bow, for many people lack self-control.
They take trained elephants to battle, and kings ride on royal trained elephants. The best of them are self-trained men, those who can endure abuse in peace.
There is a lot more on every page of Monkey and your time will be well spent in reading this great classic that is so much like our own.
Monkey, Wu Ch'eng-En, translated by Arthur Waley, 1942, Penguin Classics, Special Indian Price, £5.99.
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