Is Sun Wukong’s mentor, Patriarch Bodhi or Patriarch Subhuti?

Did Sun Wukong worship Patriarch Bodhi or Patriarch Subhuti?

Why there is such a controversy? This actually depends on a passage in the original text of "Journey to the West".

The woodcutter said: "Not far, not far. This mountain is called Lingtai Fangcun Mountain. There is a three-star cave with a slanting moon in the mountain. There is an immortal in that cave, named "Master Subhuti." The Patriarch had countless disciples, and today there are still thirty or forty people practicing under him. If you follow that path and go south for seven or eight miles, you will reach his home. ”

Because of the woodcutter’s words, many people disputed whether Sun Wukong worshiped Patriarch Bodhi or Patriarch Subhuti. There are also dark theories saying that Patriarch Subhuti was transformed by Tathagata Buddha. The woodcutter was indeed blamed for causing this misunderstanding. The main reason was that there was no punctuation in ancient times. Different sentences would have completely different meanings, which led to such an oolong.

The original text reads: In the Cave There is an immortal named Patriarch Subhuti.

The sentence should be broken up like this: "Name / Xu / Patriarch Bodhi"

"Xu" in ancient classical Chinese has the meaning of "should and is". Meaning.

The following text can further confirm it. The original text reads:

Seeing the Bodhi Patriarch sitting on the stage, there were thirty little immortals standing on the stage on both sides. It is: the untainted posture of the Great Enlightenment Golden Immortal, the Bodhi of the Wonderful Appearance of the West; the three and three elements are neither born nor destroyed, and the whole energy and spirit are infinitely kind. Master Li Jie Ming Xin.

Here it is directly referred to as Patriarch Bodhi, which further proves that Sun Wukong worships Patriarch Bodhi. There is no such deity as Patriarch Subhuti. In fact, it is due to the different sentences in the ancient text. Everyone mistakenly thinks that Sun Wukong worships the great master Subhuti.

Not only did sentence breaks cause such incidents in ancient times, but now there are also some jokes caused by sentence breaks.

For example, the host of a provincial radio station made a joke due to improper sentence segmentation.

When broadcasting the national women's football match, Sun Wen scored the second goal to seal the victory. The joke "Sun Wenmei/Mei scored twice" (should read: Sun Wen/Mei scored twice) was broadcast

When broadcasting a press release, "Israeli Prime Minister Netanya/Nonsense" appeared again ..." (should read: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu / said...) such a joke.

I once added half-jokingly: "When Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu / said... " (should be: Arafat)"

It seems that we still need to read more books, read more newspapers, eat less snacks and sleep more.