So the second king of the Tang,
Very pleased at heart,
By his own mouth promised them
That in whatever district
And whatever prefecture,
Whether when buying or selling,
The rats would always
Additionally have
Three cups of remaining grain.41
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King Yama thereupon has the cat summoned to the underworld, to be
convinced by the statement of the cat of the crimes of the mice. One further conspicuous difference between The Scroll of the Accusation of the Mouse against the Cat and The Different Statements is that the latter version includes a long passage in which the cat, once arrested by King Yama’s runners, on
arriving in the underworld observes how sinners there are punished for their crimes:
When King Yama
Had finished reading
This long accusation by the mouse,
He loudly cursed,
“You little cat,
You brazen animal!
I had hoped
That on earth you would
Devoutly recite the Buddha’s name,
You definitely cannot
Without any reason
Cruelly kill any other living beings!
I have here my royal
Rubbed iron tally
And will immediately issue a warrant
For the arrest
Of this little cat
So he may be questioned and confess!”
Oxhead
And Horseface
Didn’t dare to delay or procrastinate,
But mounted
Their storm-fire wheels
That turned like a whirlwind indeed.
When these two ghosts
Arrived here on earth,
They first visited the god of the soil,
And that old god of the soil
Led this couple of ghosts
Over the streets to find the location.
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When the two ghosts
Arrived at the gate,
The gods of the gate blocked their way,
Whereupon these ghosts
Presented the iron tally
For inspection by these divinities.
The kitchen god Zhang
Welcomed the couple
And ascertained the right address,
Whereupon the house god
Led the two ghosts
Into the mansion’s main room.
Right that moment
That little cat
Was washing his face on the cupboard,
And in one swish
Around his neck
A cuff had been fastened.
Whatever he said,
Whatever he claimed,
They took him along by a chain:
When they left the world of light
And entered the underworld
A heavy fog was blocking his sight.
When looking ahead,
He could not discern
The wide road to the world of light,
When looking behind him,
He could not discern
The house of his owner anymore.
He encountered
A mountain of broken coins
That was extremely hard to cross;
The forked trees
Without branches or leaves
Looked like after a fall and winter.
He encountered
A mountain of fiery flames
That was extremely hard to cross;
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At Iron-Board Mountain
The three roads
All hastened toward the dark city.
When the little cat
Thereupon arrived
At the Ghost-Gate Pass,
There was no end
Of coming and going
Of the souls that had died.
He also saw
At Fengdu City
The roaring clouds of black storms
And also heard
The weeping of ghosts
Who were locked inside its walls.
At Hungry-Dogs Village
And Soul-Blinding Station
Everyone was bewailing his fate;
On Bright-Mirror Hill,
On Sin-Mirror Terrace
Good and evil were distinguished.
In the eastern corridor
Were hung up
Mule stealers and horse thieves;
In the western corridor
Were hung up
Dead corpses and lost spirits.
Steel forks
Pierced heretics
Who were bleeding profusely;
Iron pincers
Embraced the nuns
Who had defiled the holy sutras.
Those who had spilled rice
Or thrown away noodles
Saw organs and innards crushed;
Those ugly wives
Who had cursed their husbands
Were beheaded without pardon.
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Those who on earth
Had spoken lies,
And concocted false accusations,
On arrival there below
Had their tongues ripped out,
So blood was covering their breasts.
Those who betrayed their marriage
There saw their bodies
Cut into two parts by a huge saw;
Those who hit their father,
Those who cursed their mother
Were all cooked alive in vats of oil.
To a high column
Were tied students
To be pierced by random arrows,
Because they,
While reciting the Four Books,
Had furtively cursed their teachers.
Those who walked across
A bridge of gold or silver
Became Buddhas, turned into gods;
While the deluded people
Crossed bridges of brass or iron,
Which were covered in heavy fog.
There were brass snakes
And also iron dogs
That were guarding these bridges
And would eat your flesh
And lap up your blood
Without any regard for the stench.
But on top of that bridge
The Old Mother was found: 42
While seated in the lotus position
She held in her hand
A wooden-fish drum
As she recited the holy sutras,
Admonishing people
While here on earth
To devoutly practice good deeds
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So they would not
On arrival there below
Have to suffer no end of misery.
The first class of people
Will through their devotion
Become Buddhas and turn into gods;
The second class of people
Will through their devotion
Live as emperors in their palaces.
The third class of people
Will through their devotion
Become grandees and prince-consorts;
The fourth class of people
Will through their devotion
Become civil and military officials.
The fifth class of people
Will through their devotion
Achieve high status and great riches,
But the sixth class of people
Will for lack of devotion
Become beggars crying in the streets.
The seventh class of people
Will for lack of devotion
Be reborn as mules and change into horses;
The eighth class of people
Will for lack of devotion
Be demoted to the status of furry animals.
The ninth class of people
Will for lack of devotion
Become fishes or turtles, crabs or shrimps;
The tenth class of people
Will for lack of devotion
Turn into slithery snakes or millipedes.
Under a variety of titles, such as Newly Printed: A Complete Account of the Judgment of King Yama concerning the Cat and the Mouse (Xinke Yanluo panduan maoshu quanzhuan), this text was repeatedly reissued by the litho-
graphic printers of Shanghai in the early decades of the twentieth century.43
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It must have enjoyed quite some popularity in later years, too, as it was at least twice included in typeset booklets of the 1920s that combine several
performance texts of dagushu (big-drum books); some of these editions carried a subtitle that draws special attention to the inclusion of the long description of the underworld.44 The text survived until recent times in the repertoire of several local performance genres.45 The lithographic publishers of early twentieth-century Shanghai also issued a very similar text that was variously titled The Latest Version of the Accusation of the Mouse against the Cat (Zuixin laoshu gao mao), Completely Il ustrated: The Accusation of the Mouse against the Cat (Quantu laoshu gao mao), or Improved: The Accusation of the Mouse against the Cat (Gailiang laoshu gao mao).46 In this case the text starts in seven-syllable lines, but quickly moves to ten-syllable lines, to conclude again in seven-syllable lines. The contents are basically the same as those of The Different Statements, but the stylistic register would appear to be somewhat more elevated. This is also one of the rare popular texts to mention the ability of aged rats to turn themselves into bats.
Yet two other versions of the underworld law case of the mouse against
the cat have been preserved in woodblock-printed editions of the late nine-
and titled The Rat Accuses the Cat (Haozi gao mao), identifies its genre as lianhualao (beggar’s song). Following an opening consisting of a lyric and a four-line poem (celebrating the power of King Yama), the text is once again composed in ten-syllable lines. In this text, too, the cat is treated to a display of underworld punishments for sinners before it is interrogated by King
Yama. Following the cat’s statement, mouse and cat engage in an angry
debate, until King Yama sentences the rodent to hell and allows the cat to
return to the world of light. Following King Yama’s verdict, this text includes a long section detailing the joy of the cat’s owner, Lady Li, when it revives.47
As soon as Lady Li
Had observed this,
She was overcome by joy,
And facing
The northwest
She expressed her thanks.
First she thanked Heaven,
Next she thanked Earth,
And Buddha for their help,
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And then recited
The name of Guanyin
Who Saves from Disaster.
When Lady Li saw
Her cat had revived,
She was overcome by joy,
She rushed forward,
Lifted it up in her arms,
And smothered it with kisses.
Now, when that cat
Had returned to life,
It thought quite carefully:
It remembered
Its underworld experiences
So even in more detail.
“I remember
How that mouse
Lodged an accusation,
And how the two of us
Were interrogated
In the hall of King Yama.
In the underworld
I have also paid
A visit to the many hells:
Those who do good,
Those who practice evil—
I have seen the final truth!
Don’t say that
There’s no retribution
Here and now immediately:
If it takes long,
It will hit your children;
If it comes fast, you’ll be hit!”
In just a few words
I cannot fully tell
This “Accusation of the Cat”—
May all of you
Be covered by a thousand auspicious clouds,
And be visited by a hundred blessings.
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Stripped of this final section, this version of the tale survived into recent times, for instance, as a Lubei hangge (stamping song from northern Lu).
The Rat Seeks Redress (Haozi shenyuan) was printed in 1882 by the Ronghuantang.48 The text is mostly written in ten-syllable lines and opens with an extended scene (in lines of seven syllables) of animals crowding outside the court of King Yama, waiting for their case to be heard on the first of the month.49 In this version of the tale, the mouse in its statement before the bench claims that its ancestor had once saved Emperor Li Shimin from a
bomb plot by chewing through a wax candle containing a thousand pounds
of gunpowder:
Now, the country of Xiliang
Conceived an evil scheme
And offered a large candle in tribute
That contained inside
A gunpowder bomb
Called the Commander in Chief.
It was only
My ancestor