Production Notes - Episode 7 | On Divinity and Religion

0:00 The 5th Monkey is a teammate of volunteers from around the world. We do not receive any outside funding. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to keep the series going. Thank you, Journey to the West, An Audio drama series. Production Notes Episode 7. Hello dear listeners, this is Lynn, the voice of the 5th Monkey.

0:30 Before we begin, just reminding you that polls and Q A's are available on Spotify and we really encourage every listener to interact with us. Done listening to Chapter 7 yet? If not, do it otherwise, it will be a little hard to follow. What I'm going to talk about later. Chapter 7 is, to put it mildly, vocabulary heavy.

0:53 I had to familiarize myself with a lot of Sanskrit words, so I get it if anyone feels a bit confused already. But as you probably know, every episode is subtitled on YouTube, so please head there for clarification. It's super helpful if you want to do your own research too. And in this episode I'll go beyond the easily googolable and cover some of the more nuanced stuff.

1:18 We'll do it in the chronological order. Never wondered why Wuku was in the furnace for 49 days. Like I mentioned before, numbers in Chinese culture often carry more symbolic meanings rather than merely describing a certain amount of things. If you read the original text, you will notice what it actually said was chichi sishujiotian, meaning 7 * 7 equaling to 49 days.

1:49 If you learn the multiplication in Chinese, chances are you will be required to recite the multiplication table by third grade. When you're a kid the process may feel kind of painful, but once it's carved into your brain you will be grateful for it till the day you die because it makes life so much easier. Anyway, as you may have noticed, 49 is the product of 7 multiplying by itself.

2:15 According to Buddhist traditions, once someone dies, starting from the date of death, there shall be 7 cycles of mourning, with each cycle lasting 7 days. This tradition will be referenced later in the story as well, but by the time Journey to the West was written, the idea has been fully secularized, so non Buddhists observe in cycles OF72IN modern day China, a lot of people still observe the first cycle. So for example, if someone perished in an accident, the family would head to the site of the accident and burn paper offerings on the 7th day after their death. In other words, the number 7 thus carries a certain divine vibe to it.

3:01 You will notice how some of the supernatural beings in Journey to the West are in groups of seven as well. Other numbers too have similar symbolic meanings behind them, but that's a topic for the future. In short, there are seldom truly random numbers in a story about gods and monsters. Just keep that in mind and then we move on to close fight with Divine Officer Wang.

3:27 The fight itself is super insignificant and most people don't even know that Divine Officer Wang existed. And that's okay. I just want to highlight his heart Whip, which by definition is different from the conventional soft whip you see used on horses. For example, a hard whip is in fact a metal rod, but not as long as the sort of stick Wukong uses.

3:55 It's called a whip because you have to swing it to cause damage. In Chinese, both hard and soft whips are called bin, but we just want to clarify that Divine Officer Wang was in fact welding a heavy metal rod rather than an elastic whip, and then we move on to God names again. We also mentioned this before, but we'll just explain it a bit further now with context about how we choose to translate names originated in Sanskrit. We kept the names Ananda and Kashyap in Sanskrit because they are minor characters in the story. And also, the fact that there are Chinese names may still be caught in controversies similar to what happened to Dushta Palace.

4:41 So just to get ourselves out of that pronunciation mess, we chose Sanskrit over Mandarin to keep things simple. But when it comes to Buddha, it's a completely different story. If I say to target, no Chinese person would know whom I'm referring to. So if we gave that name to our listeners, we're adding an extra barrier between you and a Chinese reader.

5:06 And because that's the last thing we want, we instead went for rule like, which is a translation based on the meaning of the name, to target one who has thus come. And that's the name every Chinese person can recognize. Plus, Rulai has a very heavy presence in the story, and I want to keep my butchering of the Sanskrit language to the minimum in the story. Rulai tried to convince Wukong to convert to faith. Here is where I need to give a shout out to our proofreader who pointed out that this may come across as confusing to listeners, especially those who are more used to monotheism. And as an atheist Chinese person. That would have never crossed my mind, because Chinese mythology is a very classic polytheistic

5:55 system. Sure, there are gods who are more powerful than others, but the whole thing works largely like a government. There are different departments, and each God is in charge over a specific aspect of life. So when worshippers seek certain things in life, like wealth, romantic encounters or good school grades, they of course can go to the more generic deities who bless you on everything, but they often would seek gods who specialize in those aspects. There is a running joke among Chinese youth about how we are practically superstitious in the sense that while we would happily had to places worship to ask for a good fortune in life, we have no loyalty to any of the deities we pray to. And if this God doesn't work, we

6:44 would just go to another God with a better record. So rather than us making ourselves worthy of blessing, the gods have to work extra hard to make sure our wishes are fulfilled. Otherwise no one will go to their temples and give offerings. Which is honestly why the gods in Journey to the West have just enough dignity for you to acknowledge their godly status, but not enough for them to be actually intimidating.

7:13 We literally just projected bureaucracy onto the sky and that's pretty much how our domestic religion of Taoism functions in folk culture. Till this day when Buddhism stayed with the Chinese people long enough, we started to treat them the same way as well. Which is why in Journey to the West you see Taoist and Buddhist deities coexisting in the same universe where they hold parties with each other.

7:39 No one is but the other and mortals are free to worship whoever they want. It's a fluid situation that we will dig deeper when the time is right. So what did Rulai mean exactly by converting to faith? The original text is squiy, which quite literally means converting to religion. But which religion?

8:01 The answer is any religion, or even none at all. Because squiy and the broad sense doesn't even have to mean converting to a specific religion, but rather converting to a humble cultivating lifestyle. Rulai was basically just telling Wukong to stop destroying everything and go home. Wukong may face some consequences, but it was not a demand for him to enter any religion. He literally just needed to behave and be a good monkey. So up to this point, Wukong, despite having received a Taoist esque education from Patriarch Bouti and having been confronted by Buddha himself, was still not a member of any religion. And he won't be until later in the story. When he officially enters the religion, you won't know. But at this point Rulai was just

8:58 trying to talk sense into a misbehaving little child. Moving on. Another new God in this chapter would be so seeing the star of longevity again, another God who frequently appears in Chinese homes and establishments. He has a signature giant round forehead, often seen walking with a cane and accompanied by a crane and a deer.

9:25 He's the one who makes sure your grandparents stay alive and healthy. You may recall that the great white Gold Star also win by the name the great White Star of Longevity. So let me clear things up here. First of all, know that there are two different old men. Second, remember that the Gold Star is Planet Venus, and although in traditional Chinese astronomy, Planet Venus also went by the name Changgungsing Star of longevity, due to its superb brightness, it isn't particularly associated with old age. So when it comes to blessings for long life, we always turn to shosing who comes from the South Pole, just making sure we're not praying to the wrong God and just wrapping up a few things related to the Five Faces

10:20 mountain. The Five Faces, as mentioned in the chapter, are gold, wood, water, fire, and earth. Gold, or Xin in Chinese could refer to all metals in general. Just know that it doesn't only refer to gold, gold. We didn't choose metal as the translation because metal star sounds much less cool than Gold Star and if you want to be consistent with our translations, might as well be consistent with the cooler sounding name.

10:50 And another thing about this chapter is that because the bet between Buddha and Sung Kong was so iconic, the phrase caught in the center of someone's palm, it's now an everyday Chinese saying used to describe someone who is trapped and at the mercy of someone else. That's honestly the power of folk literature. The story seeps into everyday language where anyone can instantly get the reference.

11:19 OK, that's another episode of Production US for you here. This episode is sponsored by patrons Clean Thomas C, Barry Bunny and also our dear subscribers on podcast. Thank you all very much and we read all your comments in thirst before you leave. Don't forget to follow us and subscribe. This is the fifth Monkey and thank you for listening. Journey to the West and audio Drama Series is a production by the 5th Monkey.

11:52 If you enjoy our work, become our pay subscriber of Patron to gain access to the latest release and other exclusive content. Head to www.thefifthmonkey.com for links to all the platforms we're on and support us on social media. Shares, comments, emails, All are welcome. This is Lynn. See you in the next episode.