Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her ... - Khamkoo

36 Introduction
hungry wolf now wants to eat him: only by serving as his food,
the wolf claims, will Master Dongguo complete the act of saving
his life. Master Dongguo protests, and they decide to submit their
quarrel to the judgment of three elders. The first, a withered apricot
tree about to be chopped down, and the second, an old buffalo
about to be slaughtered, both side with the wolf, but the third, an
old man, feigns disbelief and first wants proof that the wolf could
really have fitted into the chest. The wolf climbs into the chest to
demonstrate, but as soon as he has done so, the old man takes the
scholar’s sword, and together they put an end to the ungrateful
creature.
In classical Chinese literature, the Tale of the Wolf of Zhongshan
is an unusual text in that it is a rare example of a fully developed
animal fable. While texts in which animals are described as imbued
with human emotions are not uncommon, we only seldom encounter
a prose fable or a poem in which animals as such, without first
having to be transformed into human beings, are allowed to
speak. 119 In this tale not only are a wolf and a buffalo allowed to
speak, but so is a tree. This latter phenomenon may be due to a
possible Indian origin of the tale. In his 1826 rendition of the Indian
fable-collection Pañcatantra on the basis of versions from South India,
J. A. Dubois included a fable in which a brahmin carries a crocodile
at the latter’s request from a small creek to the river Ganges;
when they arrive there a few days later, the hungry crocodile wants
to eat his benefactor, and they put their quarrel before a mango
tree, a buffalo, and a jackal. 120 One may also discern the influence
of fifteenth-century Chinese drama in the figure of the complaining
apricot tree, as the plays of Zhu Youdun (1379–1439) feature a large
number of quite talkative plants and trees. 121 The disgruntled old
(but still alive) buffalo has his direct predecessor in the slaughtered
animal that in a long song suite by Yao Shouzhong (second half of
the thirteenth century) pleads his case in the underworld before
King Yama. 122
Despite its obvious roots in international folklore, the Zhongshan
lang zhuan is anything but a popular legend when it first appears
in print. Its many classical allusions mark it as a learned fable
on ingratitude. The authorship of this text is a matter of dispute.
Both Kang Hai (1475–1541) and Ma Zhongxi (1446–1512) have
been mentioned as author, and both are said to have written this
text as an attack on an ungrateful former friend. Later the text was