The Story of the Monkey King and the Bone Demon
At a Glance
- Central figures: Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, disciple and protector; Tang Sanzang, the monk he serves; and the Bone Demon, Bái Gǔ Jīng, the White Bone Spirit, who disguises herself to capture Tang Sanzang.
- Setting: A remote mountain on the road to India, during the pilgrimage to retrieve sacred Buddhist scriptures; drawn from Journey to the West, the classic novel chronicling Tang Sanzang’s journey.
- The turn: Sun Wukong kills the Bone Demon three times, each time in a different human disguise - but Tang Sanzang sees only an innocent person cut down, and banishes his disciple for it.
- The outcome: Without Sun Wukong, Tang Sanzang is captured by the demon. Only when he calls the Monkey King back does the Bone Demon finally fall for good.
- The legacy: The episode stands as one of the best-known passages in Journey to the West - the story in which Tang Sanzang’s failure to trust Sun Wukong costs him his freedom, and in which Sun Wukong returns anyway.
Sun Wukong had eyes that could see through any disguise. He earned them the hard way, locked inside the Furnace of Eight Trigrams for forty-nine days, and when the doors opened and he kicked his way free, those eyes were permanently changed - blazing gold, able to strip illusion from anything living. It was a gift that served him well on the road to India. It was also, more than once, a source of grief.
The pilgrimage party was four: Tang Sanzang the monk, Sun Wukong the Monkey King, Zhu Bajie the pig-spirit, and Sha Wujing the river demon. Together they moved west through mountains and wilderness, fetching scriptures on behalf of the Tang emperor and the Bodhisattva Guanyin. Many demons wanted Tang Sanzang dead - or rather, wanted to eat him, since eating the flesh of so enlightened a monk was said to bring immortality. The Bone Demon, the White Bone Spirit, was one of these. When she saw the pilgrims crossing her mountain, she did not attack directly. She was too clever for that. She had seen what Sun Wukong could do with his staff.
The Young Woman in the Road
The Bone Demon took the shape of a young woman carrying a basket. She came down the mountain path toward the travelers looking lost and frightened, and told Tang Sanzang she was from a nearby village and had lost her way. The monk, whose compassion for every suffering creature was both his greatest virtue and his most dangerous quality, was moved immediately. Zhu Bajie was moved too, though for different reasons.
Sun Wukong looked at her. The golden eyes saw what she was. He stepped forward without a word and swung the Ruyi Jingu Bang - his iron staff, which could shrink to a needle and grow to a pillar - and he struck the young woman down.
She fell. Tang Sanzang looked at the body and felt sick. He saw a young woman dead on the road. He did not see that the Bone Demon had slipped free at the last instant, leaving only the disguise behind. Sun Wukong tried to explain. Tang Sanzang would not hear it. He recited the words of the tightening spell - the one Guanyin had given him to control the Monkey King - and the golden headband around Sun Wukong’s skull contracted until the pain blotted out thought. Sun Wukong pressed his palms to his head and waited for the words to stop.
The Old Woman and the Old Man
The Bone Demon came back. She had not died - demons of her kind were harder to kill than that - and she came back as an old woman, hunched and weeping, saying she was searching for her daughter who had gone out with a basket and not returned. Tang Sanzang wept with her. Zhu Bajie helped her along the path.
Sun Wukong struck her down again.
Tang Sanzang was furious. He recited the tightening spell a second time, longer than before. When it finally released, Sun Wukong stood with his hands at his sides and said nothing.
A third time the Bone Demon returned. An old man now, tottering and grief-stricken, saying that both his wife and his daughter had been murdered by a violent monk’s disciple. Tang Sanzang watched the third body fall and made up his mind. Three deaths. Three innocent people, as far as he could see. He would not travel another day with a disciple capable of this.
Banishment from the Pilgrimage
Tang Sanzang wrote out the formal words of dismissal. He recited the tightening spell until Sun Wukong was on his knees. Then he told him to go home - back to Mount Huaguo, Flower-Fruit Mountain, where he had been king before any of this began. The bond between master and disciple was severed.
Sun Wukong did not argue. He had killed three demons. He had been right each time. It did not matter. He bowed to Tang Sanzang, told him to watch his own safety on the road, and left.
The mountain was quiet after he was gone.
The Capture of Tang Sanzang
The Bone Demon moved quickly. With Sun Wukong off the mountain, there was no one who could see through her. She came for Tang Sanzang in her true form - not a frightened woman or a grieving elder but the White Bone Spirit, stripped of all pretense. Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing fought her. They were strong enough fighters in their own ways, but not strong enough for this. Tang Sanzang was taken.
Sitting in her lair, bound and waiting, the monk understood what he had done. The young woman, the old woman, the old man - all three had been the same creature. Sun Wukong had seen it clearly. Three times he had tried to protect his master and three times his master had punished him for it. Tang Sanzang had been so certain of his own perception that it had not occurred to him to doubt it.
Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing came to the same conclusion their master had reached: they could not do this without Sun Wukong. They sent word to Flower-Fruit Mountain.
Sun Wukong’s Return
He came back. That is the part of the story that lingers. He had been banished, punished, dismissed with a written declaration - and he came back, because Tang Sanzang was his master and the pilgrimage was his charge and loyalty, for Sun Wukong, was not conditional on being treated fairly.
He found the Bone Demon’s mountain and he hit her with everything he had. No hesitation, no speech. The staff came down and this time he did not stop until there was nothing left to resurrect. The White Bone Spirit, stripped of her disguises one final time, could not piece herself back together. She was finished.
Tang Sanzang walked out of her lair. He looked at his disciple and did not speak immediately. The headband was still around Sun Wukong’s head, as it always would be. The staff was back to the size of a needle in his ear. Around them the mountain was still, nothing moving in the cold air.
The pilgrimage continued west.