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Ruyi Jingu Bang
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Description
Compliant golden-hooped staff
In Journey to the West (sixteenth century, attributed to Wu Cheng'en), Sun Wukong takes the Ruyi Jingu Bang from the Dragon King's palace: an iron pillar that shrinks or grows, once used to gauge the ocean — the novel jokes it was Yu's measuring-rod in the flood. Weight and size-change are the book's numbers. The staff is vernacular fiction using older monkey and weapon lore, not a temple relic with a chain of custody. Wukong hides it as a needle in the ear and fights heaven with it on the road west.
Primary Sources
“The Monkey King took the iron from the sea treasury: a golden-hooped rod that obeyed his wish, shrinking to a needle or swelling to a pillar.”
Powers & Abilities
Size ManipulationInfinite WeightIndestructibilityOwner Recognition