What is the origin of the Iron Fan Princess in "Journey to the West"?

Let's first talk about the Bull Devil King, the Bull Devil King himself is a great white cow, he has a concubine called the Jade Princess, this name is very good, but in fact it is a fox into a spirit. As for the wife of the Bull Demon King, she is the Iron Fan Princess of basho Cave in Cuiyun Mountain. Judging from the original work, the Iron Fan Princess was not an animal cultivated into a spirit, so she never appeared in her original form.

Since Princess Iron Fan is not a goblin, what is her origin?

In the Hundred Returns to the West, it is not mentioned that the princess of the iron fan is not mentioned, but only mentions that she has a magical banana fan that can extinguish the fire of the Flame Mountain. Where this banana fan came from, the author did not say, so much so that it caused many readers to speculate.

In fact, Princess Tiefan does have a history, and it is not small, but we see that Wu Cheng'en's "Journey to the West" in the Ming Dynasty did not say it. The identity of the Iron Fan Princess is clearly stated in Yang Jingxian's "Journey to the West Miscellaneous Drama" in the Yuan Dynasty.

In the eighteenth episode of the Yuan Miscellaneous Drama Journey to the West, Tang Monk and Wukong passed through the women's country and got lost when they continued to travel west. At this time, they saw an immortal who was collecting medicine, and Tang Monk asked him for directions.

The medicinal immortals told them that less than five hundred miles away from here, there was a mountain called the Flame Mountain. There is a woman in the east of the mountain, named Princess Tiefan. The mountain where he lived was called Tiefeng Peak. This iron fan princess made an iron fan weigh more than a thousand pounds, and there were twenty-four bones on the fan, corresponding to the twenty-four solar terms of the year. If you use an iron fan to fan the flame mountain, one fan will start wind, two fans will rain, and three fires will be extinguished. Only in this way can we cross the Flame Mountain and continue westward.

When Sun Wukong heard this, he was dismissive and said, "I drowned him as soon as I urinated."

After Tang Monk and Goku arrive at the Flame Mountain, Goku plans to go to Princess Iron Fan to borrow a fan. Before that, he called out to the land god and asked something. For example, does the Iron Fan Princess have a husband, is willing to recruit herself as a son-in-law, and so on.

Don't be surprised, because in the miscellaneous drama Journey to the West, Sun Wukong is a monkey, and it is normal to talk hooligans. If you are interested, you can see that monkeys often show off their words, and they are very rogue.

Immediately after the nineteenth out, the Iron Fan Princess came on, and she introduced her own life history.

(Iron Fan Princess Shang, Yun) Concubine Iron Fan Princess is also, the ancestor of the wind subordinates, but the wind gods are under my control. In order to bring wine to compete with the Queen Mother, but instead of the Heavenly Palace, he lived in this Tiefeng Mountain, and came to Dalai to be happy and happy.

It is obvious to say that princess Tiefan was originally the ancestor of the Heavenly Court Wind Department, because she was drunk and quarreled with the Queen Mother, so she went down to the Heavenly Realm and went to the Iron Ridge Mountain on the east side of the Flame Mountain to be happy.

Not only that, but the circle of the Iron Fan Princess is also very powerful.

Meng Po is what I taught, and the wind god is my positive result. I and Lishan's mother are two sisters, and I ventilate him to make a fire. Horned Wood Jiao and Jing Mu Yan are uncles, and Dou Mu Badger and Kui Wood Wolf are uncles and uncles. On that day, the feast peach caused this disaster, and the Queen Mother of the West said that he could deceive the wind wood to urge the maple.

Lo and behold, Princess Tiefan and Lishan's old mother were actually sisters, and the Four Wood Bird Star were actually relatives.

Finally, the Iron Fan Princess also said that her iron fan, "cast by the six gods, and polished by the five gods" "The flame mountain in the south of the single town, without this fan, everyone cannot pass." "Explains the reason why the iron fan can extinguish the fire of the Flame Mountain."

Sun Wukong went to borrow the iron fan, but the iron fan princess did not give it, and also flew Goku fan.

In the end, it was Guanyin Bodhisattva who came out on horseback and mobilized the gods of the water department, such as Lei Gong, Electric Mother, Wind Bo, Rain Master, Ji Shui Leopard, And Samsui Ape, which extinguished the fire of the Flame Mountain.

It can be found that in the miscellaneous drama Journey to the West, the Iron Fan Princess, the Iron Fan, the Flame Mountain, and the Fire Extinguishing are mentioned, which is basically the same as in the Ming Dynasty Journey to the West.

This can show that when Wu Cheng'en wrote the Journey to the West, he followed the miscellaneous drama set, but made an appropriate adaptation, deleted the part (the origin of the Iron Fan Princess), added part (the Iron Fan and the Bull Demon King, the Red Child is a family), making the story richer, the plot also ups and downs, and the audience's reading experience is better.

Therefore, the origin of princess Tiefan is not simple, she is originally the ancestor of the wind department, and the old mother of Lishan and the four wood birds are relatives. She dared to quarrel with the Queen Mother and went out of the heavens, quite bold.

If you go back further, then the archetypal character of the Iron Fan Princess, and the ghost mother. I have written a very detailed article before, examining the prototype of the Iron Fan Princess, including the Iron Fan Princess, the Luocha Girl and the Devil Mother in the Miscellaneous Drama Journey to the West. Here, I will briefly say.

In the Tang Dynasty Buddhist texts, there is a devil's mother, which introduces the refuge of the devil's mother.

The devil's mother has five hundred children and likes to eat children, sometimes even pregnant women. Later, the Buddha captured her youngest son (Ai Nu'er, also known as the Fire Child, the prototype of the Red Child) and held him in a bowl, and if he was not rescued in time, the child would die after seven days.

The devil's mother went to find the Buddha with many ghosts, and after seeing Ainu'er, she directly robbed them. But the Buddha also brought a lot of gods and Buddhas, much more powerful than the Devil Mother.

The Buddha scolded the devil's mother bitterly: You have five hundred children, and if you lose one, you can't stand it, and those people only have one or two children, and they are still eaten by you. The Devil Mother had an epiphany and took refuge in Buddhism.

In the Ming Dynasty, there were some paintings of the "Unveiling bowl", which were paintings of this matter.

Some murals in the Ming Dynasty can also see the ghost mother, holding a fan in her hand, and she has a child next to her, that is, Ai Nu'er. They were later created by the literati and evolved into the Iron Fan Princess and the Red Child.

"Journey to the West" also mentions the ghost mother, which is the trace of evolution.

Of course, regarding the origin of the Iron Fan Princess, Journey to the West also retains some traces. For example, when the Bull Devil King introduced the Iron Fan Princess to the Jade Fox Spirit, he mentioned that "my mountain wife has been practicing since childhood, and she is also a virtuous fairy."

Because of this, the Iron Fan Princess does not have the appearance of a monster, because she is not an animal at all, her predecessor is the Devil Mother and the Iron Fan Princess, all of whom are fairies who have cultivated the Eight Classics of the Dao.