Twice ToldFeng Menglong, “Madam White Is Kept Forever Under Leifeng Pagoda” (1624): the ending
- Language
- Chinese
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 24 September 2026
Feng Menglong (馮夢龍) put this story, 白娘子永鎮雷峰塔, in his collection Jingshi tongyan (警世通言), whose preface is dated the twelfth month of the jiazi year of the Tianqi reign, the year scholars give as 1624. It is the oldest full telling of the tale that ties the white snake to the Leifeng Pagoda. This is its ending: Xu Xuan has trapped his wife under the monk Fahai’s alms bowl and the monk has come to finish the work.
禪師喝道：「是何業畜妖怪，怎敢纏人？可說備細！」白娘子答道：「禪師，我是一條大蟒蛇，因為風雨大作，來到西湖上安身，同青青一處。不想遇著許宣，春心蕩漾，按納不住，一時冒犯天條，却不曾殺生害命。望禪師慈悲則個！」禪師又問：「青青是何怪？」白娘子道：「青青是西湖內第三橋下潭內千年成氣的青魚，一時遇著，拉[?]他為伴。他不曾得一日歡娛，并望禪師憐憫！」禪師道：「念你千年修煉，免你一死，可現本相！」白娘子不肯。禪師勃然大怒，口中念念有詞，大喝道：「揭諦何在？快與我擒青魚怪來，和白蛇現形，聽吾發落！」須臾庭前起一陣狂風，風過處，只聞得豁剌一聲響，半空中墜下一個青魚，有一丈多長，向地撥剌的連跳幾跳，縮做尺餘長一個小青魚。看那白娘子時，也復了原形，變了三尺長一條白蛇，兀自昂頭看著許宣。禪師將二物置於缽盂之內，扯下褊衫一幅，封了缽盂口，拿到雷峰寺前，將缽盂放在地下，令人搬磚運石，砌成一塔。後來許宣化緣，砌成了七層寶塔，千年萬載，白蛇和青魚不能出世。且說禪師押鎮了，留偈四句：
西湖水乾，江湖[?]不起，雷峰塔倒，白蛇出世。
法海禪師言偈畢，又題詩八句以勸後人：
奉勸世人休愛色，愛色之人被色迷。心正自然邪不擾，身端怎有惡來欺？但看許宣因愛色，帶累官司惹是非。不是老僧來救護，白蛇吞了不留些。
法海禪師吟罷，各人自散。惟有許宣情願出家，禮拜禪師為師，就雷峰塔披剃為僧。修行數年，一夕坐化
Translation
The monk shouted: “What wicked creature are you, that you dare cling to a man? Tell me everything.” Madam White answered: “Master, I am a great python. A storm drove me to West Lake, and I made my home there with Qingqing. Then I met Xu Xuan, and my heart was stirred beyond holding back. For a moment I broke the law of Heaven, but I never took a life. Master, have mercy on me.”
The monk asked again: “And what is Qingqing?” Madam White said: “Qingqing is a green fish that gathered its powers for a thousand years in the pool under the third bridge of West Lake. I came across her and took her along as a companion. She has not had a single day of pleasure. Master, have pity on her too.”
The monk said: “For your thousand years of cultivation I spare your life. Show your true form.” Madam White would not. The monk flew into a rage, chanted a spell, and roared: “Where are the guardian spirits? Bring me the green fish demon at once, and make the white snake show itself, and await my sentence.” A moment later a gale rose in the courtyard. As it passed there was a loud crack, and a green fish more than ten feet long fell out of the sky. It flapped and leapt on the ground several times and shrank into a little green fish a foot or so long. When they looked at Madam White, she too had returned to her true shape: a white snake three feet long, its head still raised, looking at Xu Xuan.
The monk put the two creatures into the alms bowl, tore a strip from his robe and sealed the mouth of the bowl with it. He carried it to the front of Leifeng Monastery, set the bowl on the ground, and had men bring bricks and stones and build a pagoda over it. Later Xu Xuan went out collecting alms and raised it into a seven-storey pagoda, so that for ten thousand years the white snake and the green fish could not come out into the world. When the monk had sealed them in, he left a verse of four lines:
When West Lake runs dry, when the rivers and lakes [?] no longer rise, when Leifeng Pagoda falls, the white snake will come out into the world.
When he had spoken the verse, the monk Fahai wrote a poem of eight lines as a warning to those who came after:
I urge the people of this world: do not love beauty. Whoever loves beauty is bewitched by it. A straight heart is not troubled by evil; an upright body, what harm can reach it? Look at Xu Xuan, who loved beauty and was dragged into lawsuits and trouble. Had this old monk not come to save him, the white snake would have swallowed him whole.
When Fahai had finished his poem, everyone went home. Only Xu Xuan chose to leave the world. He bowed to the monk as his master and took the tonsure at Leifeng Pagoda. After some years of practice, one night, sitting in meditation, he died.
Notes
- The scan is a photographic copy of poor contrast. Variant forms of the same character (峰 and 峯, 著 and 着, 卻 and 却) cannot be told apart reliably at this resolution; the transcription does not distinguish 峰 from 峯. [?] marks a character we could not read with confidence.
- 拉他為伴: the character looks like 拉 in the scan; the ctext.org transcription has 拖. Either way she took Qingqing along.
- 江湖不起: the second character is blurred. It looks more like 湖 than 潮. Wu Jieying (2012) prints 江湖不起; the ctext.org transcription prints 江潮不起 (“the river’s tide no longer rises”), which is also the reading of the verse in the later plays of Huang Tubi and Fang Chengpei as Wu quotes them. Our translation follows 湖.
- 褊衫 is a monk’s robe; the ctext.org transcription has 相衫.
- The monk seals the bowl “before Leifeng Monastery” (雷峰寺), and the first pagoda is a heap of bricks and stones raised on the spot. The seven storeys come later, from the alms Xu Xuan collects. In this version nobody claims the tenth-century pagoda was built for the snake; the story builds its own.
- Qingqing is a green fish here, not a green snake. The green snake arrives in the eighteenth-century plays.
- 揭諦 are the guardian spirits of Buddhist spells.
- The last line continues on the next page (Xu Xuan’s own farewell poem); that page is not transcribed here.