Zhu Bajie

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Zhu Bajie
Zhu Bajie (seen in page on the right)
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	豬八戒
Simplified Chinese	猪八戒
Transliterations Mandarin - Hanyu Pinyin Zhū Bājiè - Wade–Giles Chu1 Pa1-chieh4 Cantonese - Jyutping Zyu1 Baat3 Gaai3
Zhu Wuneng
Traditional Chinese	豬悟能
Simplified Chinese	猪悟能
Transliterations Mandarin - Hanyu Pinyin Zhū Wùnéng - Wade–Giles Chu1 Wu4-neng2 Cantonese - Jyutping Zyu1 Ng6 Nang4
Japanese name
Hiragana	ちょ はっかい
Transliterations - Romaji Cho Hakkai
Korean name
Hangul	저팔계
Transliterations - Revised Romanization Jeo Palgye
Thai name
Thai	ตือโป๊ยก่าย
RTGS	teu pói-kàai
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese	Trư Bát Giới

Zhu Bajie, also named Zhu Wuneng, is one of the three helpers of Xuanzang in the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. He is called "Pigsy" or "Pig" in many English versions of the story.

Zhu Bajie is a complex and developed character in the novel. He looks like a terrible monster, part human and part pig, who often gets himself and his companions into trouble by his laziness, his gluttony, and his propensity for lusting after pretty women. He is jealous of Wukong and always tries to bring him down. His Buddhist name "Zhu Wuneng", given by bodhisattva Guanyin, means "pig (reincarnate) who is aware of ability, or pig who rises to power", a reference to the fact that he values himself so much as to forget his own grisly appearance. Xuanzang gave him the nickname Bājiè which means "eight restraints, or eight commandments" to remind him of his Buddhist diet. He is often seen as the most outgoing of the group. In the original Chinese novel, he is often called dāizi (呆子), meaning "idiot". Sun Wukong, Xuanzang and even the author refer to him as "idiot" over the course of the story. Bodhisattvas and other heavenly beings usually refer to him as "Heavenly Tumbleweed."

Name(s)

Zhu Bajie's name is composed of three characters: Zhū (豬) which means "pig", and Bājiè, (八戒) which means "Eight Prohibitions". His name was formerly Zhū Liùjiè (豬六戒), liù (六) meaning "six".^{[citation needed]} When he committed two more sins, however, his name was changed to Bājiè.

In Indonesian he is known as Ti Pat Kai (which is a phonetical borrowing from [IPA: tə pat kai] Min Nan Language/Southern Min Dialect of the Chaozhou diaspora).

Story

Zhu Bajie originally held the title of Tiānpéng Yuánshuài (天蓬元帅; lit. "Marshall of the Heavenly Canopy, or the Marshall of the Heavenly Tumbleweed"), commander-in-chief of 80,000 Heavenly Navy Soldiers. He was later banished, however, for misbehaviour. At a party organized for all the significant figures in Heaven, Bajie saw the Goddess of the Moon for the first time and was captivated by her beauty. Following a drunken attempt to get close to her, she reported this to the Jade Emperor and thus he was banished to Earth. In popular retellings, Zhu Bajie was sentenced to a thousand lives where each life would end in a love tragedy. In some retellings of the story, his banishment is linked to Sun Wukong's downfall. In any case, he was exiled from Heaven and sent to be reincarnated on Earth, where by mishap he fell into a pig well and was reborn as a man-eating pig-monster known as Zhū Gāngliè ( the "steel-maned pig").

In the earlier portions of Journey to the West, Wukong and Xuanzang come to Gao village and find that a daughter of the village elder had been kidnapped and the abductor left a note demanding marriage. In some versions of the story Bajie has convinced the elder to allow him to marry the daughter based on his ability to do large amounts of hard work due to his prodigious strength. The elder recants when he discovers that although Zhu Bajie manages to do quite a lot of work in the fields he manages to eat so much that the farm is losing money anyway. After some investigations, Wukong found out that Bajie was the "villain" behind this. He fought with Wukong, but ended the fight when he learned that Wukong was a disciple of Xuanzang, and that he had also been recruited by Guanyin to join their pilgrimage and make atonements for his past sins.

Like his fellow disciples, Bajie has supernatural powers. He is capable of 36 transformations, and like his fellow disciple, Sha Wujing, his combat skills underwater are superior to that of Wukong. The novel makes use of constant alchemical imagery and Bajie is most closely linked to the Wood element, as seen by another one of his nicknames, Mùmǔ (木母, "Wood-Mother").

At the end of the novel, most of Bajie's fellow pilgrims achieve enlightenment and become buddhas or arhats, but he does not; although much improved, he is still too much a creature of his base desires. He is instead rewarded for his part in the pilgrimage's success with a job as "Cleanser of the Altars" and all the leftovers he can eat.

As a weapon, he wields a jiǔchǐ-dīngpá, a nine-tooth (jiǔchǐ) iron muck-rake (dīngpá) from Heaven that weighs roughly 5,048 kilos (or roughly 11,129 pounds).

See also

• Journey to the West in popular culture

References