Yellow Brow and Maitreya

Yellow Brow had been the chime-striking boy under Maitreya, keeping the golden cymbals and the acquired human-seed bag at his master’s seat. While Maitreya was away visiting friends, Yellow Brow, finding the hall empty, stole both treasures, came below and raised a false Thunder Sound Temple in the Little Western Heaven, calling himself the Old Buddha Yellow Brow.

He trapped Sun Wukong with the golden cymbals and swept up the twenty-eight lodges and every divine general who came with the human-seed bag, and for days nobody could break those treasures. Noticing that his boy and his ritual objects were gone, Maitreya took the shape of a melon-grower outside the Little Western Heaven and had Sun Wukong become a ripe melon for Yellow Brow to swallow.

While Wukong beat about inside him, Maitreya took back the human-seed bag from his waist as he knelt begging, and recovered the golden cymbals too. Yellow Brow showed his boy’s shape again, Maitreya put him into the sack, shouldered the treasures and left the melon field, and behind him the Little Thunder Sound Temple fell back into bare cliff.