When this had been done the king helped Sanzang to his feet with his own hands and told his courtiers, “Write a note at once sending our personal and respectful greetings and have an official go to invite the three illustrious disciples of the Master of the Law to come here. Meanwhile the Eastern hall of the palace is to be opened up and the department of foreign relations is to arrange a banquet of thanksgiving.” Having been given these commands the officials carried them out. The scribes wrote out the note and the caterers prepared the meal. A state is indeed strong enough to overturn a mountain, and everything was done in an instant.
When Pig saw the officials come to deliver the note he was beside himself with delight. “Brother,” he said, “it really must be miracle medicine. From the way they're coming to thank you you must have pulled it off.”
“You've got it all wrong, brother,” said Friar Sand. “As the saying goes, 'One man's good fortune affects his whole household.' We two made up the pills, so we take a share of the credit. So just enjoy yourself and stop talking.” Hey! Just look at the three brothers as they all happily go straight to the palace, where all the officials received them and led them to the Eastern hall.
Here they saw the Tang Priest with the king and his ministers and the banquet all set out ready. Brother Monkey, Pig and Friar Sand all chanted a “na-a-aw” of respect to their master, after which the officials all came in. In the best place there were set out four tables of vegetarian food. It was the sort of banquet at which there are ten times as many dishes as you can eat. In front of these tables was one of meat dishes, and on this too you could see ten dishes of rare delicacies while you ate one. To either side four or five hundred more single tables were most neatly set out.
As the ancients had it:
“A hundred rare delicacies,
A thousand goblets of fine wine,
Rich cream and yogurt,
Fat, red meat like brocade.”
Precious and many-coloured decorations,
Heavy fragrances of fruit.
Huge sugar dragons coil round sweet lions and immortals:
Ingots of cake draw furnaces escorted by phoenixes.
For meat there was pork and mutton, goose, chicken, duck and fish;
For vegetables, bamboo shoots, beansprouts, fungus and button mushrooms.
Delicious noodles in soup,
Translucent creamy sweets,
Succulent millet,
Fresh wild rice congee,
Pungent, tasty soup with rice noodles,
Dishes in which sweetness vied with beauty.
Monarch and subjects raised their cups as the diners took their seats;
Officials seated by rank slowly passed the jugs.
Holding a cup in his hand the king first seated the Tang Priest, who said, “As a monk I may not drink liquor.”
“This is alcohol-free wine,” the king said. “Could you not drink one cup of this, Master of the Law?”
“But wine is the first prohibition for us monks,” said Sanzang. The king felt awkward.
“If you may not drink, Master of the Law, how can I congratulate you?”
“My three badly-behaved disciples will drink on my behalf,” Sanzang replied. The king then happily passed the golden goblet to Monkey, who took it, made a courteous gesture to the assembly, and downed a cupful. Seeing how cheerfully he downed it the king offered him another cup. Monkey did not decline it but drank again.
“Have a third goblet,” said the king with a smile, and Monkey accepted and drank for a third time. The king then ordered that the cup be refilled and said, “Have another to make it four for the four seasons.”
Pig, who was standing beside Monkey, had to put up with the saliva gurgling inside him as the wine would not come his way; and now that the king was pressing Monkey so hard to drink he started to shout, “Your Majesty, that medicine you took owes something to me. Those pills include horse-” When Monkey heard this he was terrified that the idiot was going to give the game away, so he handed Pig the cup. Pig took the cup, drank and stopped talking.
“Holy monk,” said the king, “just now you said there was horse in the pills. What sort of horse?”
“This brother of mine has a very loose tongue,” said Monkey, cutting in. “We've got a really good formula that has been tried and tested, and he wants to give it away. The pills Your Majesty took this morning included not horse but Aristolochia.”
“What class of medicine is Aristolochia?” the king asked. “What conditions can it cure?”
One of the fellows of the Royal College of Medicine who was standing beside the king said, “Your Majesty,
Aristolochia is bitter, cold and free of poison,
Ends shortness of breath and cures phlegm well,
Circulates the energy, removes blood infections,
Fills emptiness, soothes coughs and eases the heart.
“It was the right thing to use, the right thing to use,” the king said. “The Venerable Pig must have another cup.” The idiot said nothing more, but downed three goblets. The king then gave three cupfuls to Friar Sand, who drank them. Everyone then sat down.
When they all had been feasting and drinking for a long time the king raised a large goblet once more and handed it to Monkey. “Please sit down, Your Majesty,” Monkey said. “I've been drinking hard in every round. I'd never refuse.”
“Holy monk,” the king said, “we are under a profound debt of gratitude to you that we will never be able to repay. Please drain this great goblet: we have something to say to you.”
“Say what you will first,” Monkey replied, “I'll drink after.”
“We suffered from that melancholia for years on end,” the king said, “and one dose of your miraculous pills cured it.”
“When I saw Your Majesty yesterday I realized you were suffering from melancholia,” Monkey said, “but I don't know what's getting you down.”
“There's an old saying that a family doesn't talk about its dirt to strangers,” the king replied. “As you are our benefactor, holy monk, we shall tell you, but please don't laugh.”
“I'd never dare,” Monkey said. “Please speak freely.”
“How many countries did you holy monks come through on your way here from the East?” the king asked.
“Five or six,” Monkey replied.
“What titles do the queens of the other kings have?” the king went on to ask.
“They're called the queens of the Main Palace, East Palace and West Palace,” Monkey replied.
“We don't use titles like that,” the king said. “We call the principal queen the Queen of the Sacred Golden Palace, the Eastern queen the Queen of the Sacred Jade Palace and the Western queen the Queen of the Sacred Silver Palace. But now only the Jade and Silver Queen are here.”
“Why isn't the Golden Queen in the palace?” Monkey asked.
“She has been gone for three whole years,” the king replied in tears.
“Where did she go?” Monkey asked.
“At the Dragon-boat Festival three years ago,” the king said, “we were in the Pomegranate Pavilion of the palace gardens with our queens and consorts, unwrapping rice dumplings, putting artemisia out, drinking calamus and realgar wine and watching the dragon boats race when all of a sudden there was a gust of wind. An evil spirit appeared in mid-air. He said he was the Evil Star Matcher who lives in the Horndog Cave on Mount Unicorn and was short of a wife. Seeing how beautiful and charming our Golden Queen is he wanted her for his wife and insisted we should hand her over at once. If we did not do so by the time he had asked three times he was going to eat us up first, then our officials and all the commoners living in the city. We were so concerned over the fate of our country and our people that there was no alternative: the Golden Queen had to be pushed outside the pavilion to be carried noisily off by the evil spirit. All this gave us such a fright that the rice dumpling we were eating turned solid inside us. On top of that we have been unable to sleep for worrying, which is why we were ill for three years. Since taking you holy monks' miraculous pills we have evacuated our bowels three times, and the accumulations from three years ago have all been passed. That is why our body now feels light and strong and our spirit is restored to what it was. Our life has today been given to us by you holy monks; this is a gift more weighty than Mount Tai.”