Bull Demon King

Also Known As: Chinese 牛魔王, Niu Mowang, “Bull Demon King”; also Ox King, Ox Demon King; self-styled 平天大聖, Pingtian Dasheng, “Great Sage Who Pacifies Heaven”; also called 大力王, Dali Wang, “King of Great Strength”
Region/Culture: East Asia
Mythos: Chinese Mythology, Literary Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: The Bull Demon King commands the seventy-two transformations, fights with a cudgel of wrought iron, and in his true shape is a white bull the size of a mountain range.
Role in Mythos: He is the eldest sworn brother of Sun Wukong in the sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West, and the last and largest obstacle between the pilgrims and the fan that can put out the Flaming Mountains.
Relation to Humans: His household holds the one fan that can quiet the Flaming Mountains, and the farmers who live beside the fire must pay his wife in offerings before they can sow a crop. He takes no interest in them himself, and his quarrel is with the monkey who cost him his son.

He was reading when the trouble arrived. The Bull Demon King sat in his study in Cloud-Touching Cave, deep in Thunder-Piled Mountain, quietly turning the pages of a book on alchemy, when his young wife ran in with her hair coming loose and told him that a monkey with a face like a thunder god had shouted at her on the hillside. He put the book down. He called for his helmet of wrought iron, polished until it shone like water, and his armour of yellow gold, and his iron cudgel, and he went out to the gate to see which fool it was. It was his own sworn brother.

The Bull Demon King belongs to Journey to the West, the long Chinese novel first printed in 1592 and usually credited to Wu Cheng’en. He enters it early and briefly. When Sun Wukong is still a young stone monkey making friends among the monsters of the world, he swears brotherhood with six demon kings, and the Bull is the eldest of the seven. When the monkey names himself Great Sage Equal to Heaven, the others take titles to match, and the Bull chooses Great Sage Who Pacifies Heaven. Then the monkey goes off to make war on the sky, loses, and spends five hundred years under a mountain. The Bull stays home. He marries a rakshasi called Princess Iron Fan, who keeps Plantain Cave on Jade Cloud Mountain, and they have a son, Red Boy, who can breathe fire.

By the time the two brothers meet again, most of that has gone sour. Red Boy tried to eat the monk the monkey was guarding, and the bodhisattva Guanyin took the boy away to serve her. The Bull has left his first wife’s cave for a second household. A fox spirit, the Jade-Faced Princess, had inherited a fortune from her father and offered the whole of it as a dowry, and for two years he has lived with her on Thunder-Piled Mountain and not gone back. He is rich, comfortable, and angry about his son.

The monkey needs a favour all the same. The road west runs into the Flaming Mountains, eight hundred li of fire where the air is hot in autumn and no grass grows, and the only thing that can put the fire out is Princess Iron Fan’s fan of plantain leaf. Fan it once and the flames die. Twice brings a wind. Three times brings rain. The farmers nearby buy a season’s worth of this from her with pigs, sheep and wine. She will not lend it to the monkey who ruined her son, and the Bull will not ask her to.

What follows is a long game of theft. The Bull rides off to a banquet under the water of Green Wave Pool on his golden-eyed beast, a mount that parts the water before it. Sun Wukong follows as a crab, steals the beast from the stable, puts on the Bull’s own face and rides to Plantain Cave, where the lonely first wife pours him wine and hands over the fan. The Bull comes home from the feast to an empty stall and works out the rest. He overtakes the monkey on the road wearing the shape of the pilgrim Zhu Bajie, offers kindly to carry the heavy fan, and has it back in his hand before the monkey understands what he is looking at. It is the best trick anyone plays on Sun Wukong in the whole book.

Then they fight in earnest, and the fight climbs through the animal kingdom. The Bull becomes a swan and the monkey a falcon stooping on it. He becomes a yellow eagle, a white crane, a musk deer running in the brush, a spotted leopard, a great bear, and each time the monkey takes the form of the thing that hunts it. At last the Bull gives up on borrowed shapes and takes his own. He is a white bull more than a thousand zhang from nose to tail and eight hundred zhang high at the shoulder, a zhang being about ten feet. His head stands like a line of peaks, his eyes flash, his horns rise like two iron pagodas, and the ground shakes under him. He was never a small problem.

Heaven has to send help. Four vajra guardians of the Buddha block the four roads, so that whichever way the bull turns he meets a wall. The heavenly general Li Jing arrives with his son Nezha, and the boy god leaps onto the white back and takes the head off with one stroke of his sword. Another head grows from the neck, breathing black smoke, its eyes throwing golden light. Nezha cuts again, and again, a dozen times, and a dozen heads grow. So he hangs his wheel of fire on one of the horns and fans the flame until the bull bellows and thrashes with the pain of it, and Li Jing fixes him in the glare of a demon-revealing mirror so that he cannot change his shape. “Spare my life,” the bull roars. “I am willing to submit to the Buddha.” Nezha runs a rope through his nose and leads him away like any ox from a field.

His strengths are the monkey’s own, which is the point of him. He knows the same seventy-two transformations, so nothing the monkey turns into surprises him. He can match the iron staff blow for blow through a hundred rounds. He is clever enough to steal by disguise and vast enough that only an army can hold him, and a cut that would kill anything else merely gives him a new head.

His limits are just as plain. Fire on the horn hurts him as it would hurt any beast. The mirror pins him to one shape, and without his changes he is only a very large animal with a rope in its nose. He could not keep his son, and he could not keep two houses at peace. When his first wife sees him bound, she takes off her jewels, ties up her hair like a nun, and carries the fan out with both hands to buy his life. The monkey fans the mountain forty-nine times and the rain comes down for good. She goes off to practise the faith and in time earns a place among the blessed. Of the Bull the book says only that he was led back to the Buddha’s country, and then it stops talking about him.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the Bull Demon King?

The Bull Demon King, Niu Mowang in Chinese, is a powerful demon in the sixteenth-century Chinese novel Journey to the West. He is the eldest of the seven sworn brothers that include Sun Wukong, and he calls himself the Great Sage Who Pacifies Heaven. His true form is a giant white bull.

Who are the Bull Demon King’s wife and son?

The Bull Demon King’s first wife is Princess Iron Fan, a rakshasi who lives in Plantain Cave on Jade Cloud Mountain and owns the plantain-leaf fan. Their son is Red Boy, a fire-breathing demon who was taken away by the bodhisattva Guanyin. The Bull Demon King also has a second wife, the fox spirit called the Jade-Faced Princess, with whom he lives on Thunder-Piled Mountain.

Why does the Bull Demon King fight Sun Wukong?

The Bull Demon King fights Sun Wukong over the plantain-leaf fan and over his son. Sun Wukong needs the fan to put out the Flaming Mountains so the pilgrims can travel west. The Bull Demon King refuses to help because he blames Sun Wukong for the loss of Red Boy.

How is the Bull Demon King defeated?

The Bull Demon King is defeated by the boy god Nezha and his father Li Jing, with four vajra guardians blocking his escape. Nezha cuts off his head a dozen times, but a new head grows each time. Nezha then hangs a wheel of fire on his horn, Li Jing holds him in one shape with a demon-revealing mirror, and the Bull Demon King surrenders to the Buddha.

What does the Bull Demon King look like?

In human form the Bull Demon King wears a polished wrought-iron helmet and golden armour and carries an iron cudgel. In his true form he is a white bull more than a thousand zhang long and eight hundred zhang high. Journey to the West gives him a head like a line of peaks, flashing eyes, and horns like two iron pagodas.