Sun Wukong

Sūn, Wùkōng is an important monkey deity in East Asian mythology. He has some influence from smaller, local monkey deities. However, his worship has encouraged the growth of monkey worship, or perhaps suppressed it in favor of his own while also making it more widespread. He is based off of a real human. A monk who went to get scriptures in India. He really originates from the 1592 book Journey To The West. The book quickly became common soon after being published. Being the real protagonist of the story (though some argue that it's the monk he's guarding, that's simply not true), he became a well known character. His role as a fictional character stepped up (with some criticism at the time) into the real religion, as did the monk and his other guards (his companions).

Many of his surviving temples were erected within the past 300 years. He is mostly worshiped in Fujian, China and in Chinese diaspora countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan. He is not nearly as well known in Western countries as he is in Asia, where it seems to me like everybody knows his name. In my experience, American-born Chinese people do not know of him nearly as well as people born in China, despite the sudden interest and influx of movies, both made originally in English and those easily available from China. Despite the sudden influx of movies and shows available on Netflix, Prime Video, Youtube, and other sources, he is still not well known to Westerners, though his popularity is increasing. While Journey To The West is hugely popular in Asian countries, it never picked up in the actual West until just recently, the 2020s. But he is still journeying west and it's picking up. He has a huge number of television and video game appearances or references originating from Asia, some of them are less easy for Americans to find and access.

As a deity he seems to be a protection deity. In his Buddhist aspect he is called the Victorious Fighting Buddha. In the book he is most noted for his strength and various magical abilities, being nigh-impossible to beat before his defeat under Buddha's hand-mountain. His job was to protect a monk while he went westwards to India to get more Buddhist texts to bring them back to China. He is also a Taoist deity and in the book trained under a Taoist master. It has also been said that he guards over the children and the elderly. I also read somewhere that he likes gamblers, but I couldn't find the source the last time I tried to look for it. His holidays seem to correspond to other holidays, on the same day or the day after. He is strongly associated with eating peaches due having gained some extra levels of immortality due to eating immortal peaches, and also having them on his island of his hatching as well. Where Hokkien's have a large population and have tangki, which are (sometimes young) spirit-mediums that hurt themselves brutally ***for*** their work, he is one of several popular deities that they channel. He used to have a sort of annual competition between his mediums that died in the 1980s.

## Names

His name Sūn Wùkōng can be broken down.  Sun **孫** means descendant, but is actually a pun on **狲**, meaning "monkey", as explained in the book. To my knowledge it is a real surname modern humans have. It's less of a "son" and more of a grandson and those beyond, from my understanding. Wukong **悟空** means something like "awakened to the emptiness" or "awareness of the void", a name which invokes the sense of acknowledging enlightenment.

Most Asian languages seem to have transliterated his name. In Japanese, however, due to the way they read kanji, it had been changed to the sounds "Son Goku", which wiktionary now has an entry on, much to my annoyance. They actually worship him under the name Son Goku, but no, it's a Dragonball name now, even though he's literally directly based off of him. Okay, whatever. Anime fans.

He has epithets, such as "The Monkey King" and "Great Sage Equal To Heaven." In some places where he is worshipped, one or both of these names are more commonly used to refer to and speak to him than his normal name.

## References

1. ↑ https://journeytothewestresearch.com/2021/02/15/qitian-dasheng-monkey-king-temples-in-taiwan/
2. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t75B87Lzh4E
3. ↑ https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=%E5%AD%AB%E6%82%9F%E7%A9%BA&oldid=74052965
4. ↑ https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=%E7%8B%B2&oldid=71921099
5. ↑ https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=%E5%AD%AB&oldid=73763047
6. ↑ Anthony C Yu's translation of Journey To The West
7. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monkey\_King&oldid=1179528157