Sha Ho-shang

One of the principal of Sun’s fellow-servants of the Master was Sha Ho-shang.

He is depicted wearing a necklace of skulls, the heads of the nine Chinese deputies sent in former centuries to find the Buddhist canon, but whom Sha Ho-shang had devoured on the banks of Liu-sha River when they had attempted to cross it.

He is also known by the name of Sha Wu-ching, and was originally Grand Superintendent of the Manufactory of Stores for Yue Huang’s palace.  During a great banquet given on the Peach Festival to all the gods and Immortals of the Chinese Olympus he let fall a crystal bowl, which was smashed to atoms.  Yue Huang caused him to be beaten with eight hundred blows, drove him out of Heaven, and exiled him to earth.  He lived on the banks of the Liu-sha Ho, where every seventh day a mysterious sword appeared and wounded him in the neck.  Having no other means of subsistence, he used to devour the passers-by.

Sha Ho-shang becomes Baggage-coolie

When Kuan Yin passed through that region on her way to China to find the priest who was predestined to devote himself to the laborious undertaking of the quest of the sacred Buddhist books, Sha Ho-shang threw himself on his knees before her and begged her to put an end to all his woes.

The goddess promised that he should be delivered by the priest, her envoy, provided he would engage himself in the service of the pilgrim.  On his promising to do this, and to lead a better life, she herself ordained him priest.  In the end it came about that Hsuean Chuang, when passing the Sha Ho, took him into his suite as coolie to carry his baggage.  Yue Huang pardoned him in consideration of the service he was rendering to the Buddhist cause.

Chu Pa-chieh

Chu Pa-chieh is a grotesque, even gross, personage, with all the instincts of animalism.  One day, while he was occupying the high office of Overseer-general of the Navigation of the Milky Way, he, during a fit of drunkenness, vilely assaulted the daughter of Yue Huang.  The latter had him beaten with two thousand blows from an iron hammer, and exiled to earth to be reincarnated.

During his transition a mistake was made, and entering the womb of a sow he was born half-man, half-pig, with the head and ears of a pig and a human body.  He began by killing and eating his mother, and then devoured his little porcine brothers.  Then he went to live on the wild mountain Fu-ling Shan, where, armed with an iron rake, he first robbed and then ate the travellers who passed through that region.

Mao Erh-chieh, who lived in the cave Yuen-chan Tung, engaged him as carrier of her personal effects, which she afterward bequeathed to him.