th into the hearts of the three of them. He put their primal spirits back into their original home, taught them magical spells, gave each of them immense strength, applied the right heat, and performed a magic that replaced their old bodies and bones with new ones. After the heat circulated in a roundabout way through their bodies the three young princes came to, stood up, rubbed their faces, summoned up their spirits, and all found that they were much stronger. The eldest of them could pick up the gold-banded cudgel, the second could swing the nine-toothed rake, and the third could raise the demon-quelling staff.

When the king saw this he was beside himself with delight, and arranged another vegetarian feast for the Tang Priest and his three disciples. In front of the banquet each of the princes was taught his own skill: the one who was learning the rod practised with the rod, the one who was learning the rake practised with the rake, and the one who was learning the staff practised with the staff. Though the young princes did manage a few turns and movements it took a lot of effort, and going through a series of movements left them gasping for breath, so that they could not go on. Besides this, the weapons they were using had the power of transformation, so that as the princes advanced, retreated, attacked and lifted the weapons shrunk, grew and went through amazing changes by themselves. But the princes were, after all, only mortals, and were unable to keep up with the speed of their weapons. Later that day the banquet came to an end.

The next day the three princes came back once more to express their thanks and say, “We are very grateful to you, divine teachers, for giving us this strength, but when we try to spin your divine weapons around we can only move them with great difficulty. We would like to get smiths to make lighter copies of them, but we don’t know whether you would agree to that, Teachers.”

“Great, great,” said Pig. “That’s the way to talk. You ought to have your own made because you can’t use our weapons, and anyhow we need them to protect the Dharma and beat monsters.” The princes then sent for smiths who bought ten thousand pounds of iron and steel, set up a workshop with a furnace in the front courtyard of the prince’s palace, and began to cast the weapons. On the first day the steel was made, and on the second Monkey and the other two were asked to bring out their gold-banded cudgel, nine-toothed rake and demon-quelling staff and put them under the matting shelter to be copied. The work went on by night and day without stopping.

These weapons were the treasures they always carried with them that they could not be parted from for a moment. Normally they hid them about their persons. Now the weapons were protected by coloured light, so that when they were put in the yard of the workshop for several days many beams of radiance reached up to the heavens, while every kind of auspicious vapor blanketed the earth. That night an evil spirit, who was sitting out on a night watch in a cave called Tigermouth Cave on a mountain called Mount Leopard Head that was only some twenty-five miles from the city, noticed the glow and the auspicious vapors.

Going up on his cloud to investigate he saw that the light came from the city, whereupon he brought his cloud down and went closer for a better look. Discovering that the light was coming from the weapons, he thought with delight and desire, “What wonderful weapons, what splendid treasures. I wonder whose they are and why they’ve been left here. This must be my lucky chance. I’ll take them, I’ll take them.” His covetousness now moved, he created a mighty wind, scooped up all three weapons and took them back to his cave. Indeed:

Not for one moment must the Way be left;

What can be left is not the true Way.

Cultivation and trance will both be in vain

When divine arms have been taken away.

If you do not know how these weapons were found, listen to the explanation in the next installment.