A Comparative Study of Ramayana and Journey to the West

Since its creation in the 11th century B.C., Ramayana, a long Indian epic, has been presenting a path of Dharma for Indians to live their lives until the present day, and has been exerting a great influence on many countries in Southeast Asia. Journey to the West, one of the four great classical Chinese novels, was created in the Tang Dynasty and is a story about Master Xuan Zang going to obtain Buddhist scriptures, and was passed down to the public for about 900 years until it was completed as a long novel in the Ming Dynasty. Since then, it has been recreated in many countries as well as in China. This paper compared and analyzed Ramayana and Journey to the West, focusing on their narrative structures, characters, and narratives about the creation of the universe, which is the ideological background accommodated in each text. Through the foregoing, the same cultural codes of the two works were derived, which are “reincarnation, monkey, wind, transformation technique, possessors of supernatural powers, devotion, emphasis on women’s chastity, extermination of devils and monsters, powerful assistance from animals, and the idea of change and circulation.”