LEGEND

The story of Saiyuki: Journey West is actually a retelling of the Chinese legend Xi You Ji, or the Journey to the West.

Let's start out with the actual historical events: Around 600 AD, a monk named Xiang Zuan made a journey from Chang An to what is now India to collect Buddhist scriptures and bring them to China. After he returned, he befriended the emperor and received the name Tripitaka.

The story of Tripitaka's journey was passed down through the generations until somehow a monkey got involved and eventually took over the role of the main character. Eventually, around the 1500's, somebody, possibly Wu Zheng En, wrote the story down.

In the written version, the Monkey King, Sun Wo Gong, is born. He is full of himself and searches for immortality. He learns the secrets of long life, how to fly on clouds, and 72 transformation. He returns to his subjects and trains his army, and creates a disturbance in hell. Those in Heaven are fed up with the Monkey King and decide to keep him out of trouble by inviting him to Heaven. The Monkey King realizes that this is all a plot and revolts. During his revolts, he drinks an immortality potion. But eventually, Heaven wins and the Monkey King is to be executed. Since he's immortal, execution won't work, so Heaven just traps him in a mountain. He is let out to escort Tripitaka to India. Along the way, other animal characters are met: Zhu Ba Jie, or Pigsy and Sha Monk, or the Water Demon. As far as I know, the people at Koei just made up Shu Ryorin and Lady Kikka to make their game more interesting.

Now that I've gotten you even more interested in Xi You Ji, you want to read it, don't you? ^_^ Of course, you could learn Chinese and read the real version, but some English versions include The Journey To the West translated by Anthony C Yu and The Journey To the West translated by W J F Jenner. They're both unabridged, but I haven't read either of them so I don't know how good they are.

Source: http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Ginza/6142/. Note about the differences in spelling: That site uses an older Romanization system. I use the newer one, pin yin, which I learned in Chinese school. I found a conversion chart at http://www.pantheon.org/areas/mythology/asia/chinese/articles.html.
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