Considering the Jade Emperor

I mentioned recently that I am reading an abridged version of Journey to the West (the one by Anthony C Yu), and even though I am a quarter of the way through, the actual journey hasn't even started yet!   (It's all been Monkey's back story, thus far.)

So a lot of the story so far involves Chinese heaven and its mixed bag of residents, which in true Chinese syncretic religious style involves Daoist, Buddhist and other Chinese gods and beings, all headed by the Jade Emperor.  

I don't know about the Jade Emperor as a mythological being, so I guess this Wikipedia entry is a good enough start as any.  I didn't know this snippet:

Early Catholic missionaries to China wrote often about the Jade Emperor. They noticed that, "The stories of Jesus and the Jade Sovereign are, in certain aspects, quite similar. In both cases it is claimed that a god incarnated as a human being." On the other hand, they denounced the cult of the Jade Emperor as "superstitious," and compared unfavorably the "legends" about the Jade Emperor with what they claimed was a solid historical record documenting the existence and life of Jesus.^[19]

But the thing that I thought interesting from the book was his harshness.  Remember Sandy (officially, Sha Wujing), the fishy monster spirit who is one of the three companions of the young monk Tripitaka?   His origin story is this:  

Like Zhu Bajie, Wujing was originally a general in Heaven, more specifically a Curtain-Lifting General (卷帘大将 juǎnlián dàjiàng). His fall from grace happens when he broke a valuable Jade or Crystal vase or goblet, during a Heavenly Peach Festival; some sources say that he had done this in a fit of rage while other sources say that he had done this unintentionally, and it was an accident. Either way, he was punished by the Jade Emperor, who had him struck 800 times with a rod and exiled to earth,^[1] where he was to be reincarnated as a terrible man-eating sandman, orc, ogre, troll, oni, demon, monster, or hulk.^[2] There, he lived in the Liúshā-hé (流沙河, "flowing-sand river", or "quicksand-river").^[3] Each day, seven flying swords sent from Heaven would stab him in the chest and then return. He had to live in the river full-time to avoid the punishment.

In the abridged version I'm reading, the dropped goblet sounds like it was only an accident - making the punishment exceptionally harsh.

Googling how he is in the novel, I see that someone on Reddit had noted that he (the Jade Emperor) is not portrayed all that favourably, and also appears a pretty weak character, in terms of all the trouble he has with getting Sun Wukong (the Monkey King) subdued:

In Journey to the West, the Jade Emperor frequently is unable to think of solutions by himself, is quick to jump to the death penalty on no less than Wukong, Pigsy, Sandy, and the white dragon horse. In things like the TV/movie adaptations he's shown as pretty helpless against Wukong's havoc in Heaven.

Is this usually how the Jade Emperor is portrayed in other myths about him? Perhaps he's competent in others, but I do recall a myth where he reincarnates a dragon as a Jin Dynasty prince of sorts to wage war on the Song Dynasty for miswriting the Jade Emperor's name, though that seems to be a Buddhist myth as well.

Is this perhaps a result of Buddhism wanting to portray the Daoist pantheon as more fallible or cruel?

The first answer sounds pretty convincing to me:

That's a complex question. I can't speak for the author's intent, as I don't have a good understanding of Ming-Dynasty political culture, but I can give you my personal interpretation.

On the one hand, yes, I think the book has a vested interest in portraying Buddhism as being superior to Daoism, as it's full of evil Daoist immortals being defeated by virtuous Buddhist bodhisattvas. But I think, in the case of the Jade Emperor, it's a little more complex. In traditional Chinese thinking, the Heavenly political order mirrors the Earthly political order, with a divinely-appointed emperor sitting at the center of a vast political machine of ministers and bureaucrats. As Confucius says, ""He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it" (Analects 2.1). The ideal Confucian emperor does not rule through absolute autocracy, violently enforcing his will upon the people; he cultivates a government of the wisest and most virtuous men of the land, and relies on their advice when making important decisions. In this sense, the ideal emperor lies at the center of politics, but also transcends it; he wields absolute authority, but uses it with restraint and discrimination. So, when the Jade Emperor is asking his ministers what to do, it's not because he's an incompetent idiot; it's to show that he is a wise ruler who recognizes the value of his ministers' wisdom and input.

However, you're right when you say that the Celestial Court is largely helpless against Sun Wukong's onslaught, so the point where no one less than the Buddha Himself must come in and stop the rebel. I think that this is meant to show the relationship between political and religious authority. While the Confucian/Daoist political machine is necessary for maintaining an orderly state, Buddhism is represented as a higher moral/religious authority which transcends the mere politics of the court, to which the government must bow. Throughout Chinese history, dynasties have risen and fallen, but each has had to justify itself by claiming the Mandate of Heaven, the right to rule which is divinely appointed by Heaven in response to the dynasty's moral integrity. If the Jade Emperor represents the temporal will of the government, the Buddha represents the eternal will of Heaven itself, which transcends and outlasts any mere political machine. And it's only when when these two will work together, the political and the religious (or, as Walter Bagehot put it, the "Efficient" and the "Dignified"), that a nation can prosper.

TLDR; I think the Jade Emperor is meant to be a good emperor, but his inability to defeat Sun Wukong is meant to show how the temporal, earthly authority of Confucianism and Daoism are subordinate (or, perhaps, supplementary) to the eternal, divine authority of Buddhism.

Again, I can't speak for the place of Jade Emperor in the wider history of Chinese mythology, or the particular political/philosophical theories of the time the book was written. This is merely my personal interpretation. But I hope you found it interesting!

Other people agree:

The author of Journey to the west was Buddhist and his portrayal of the Jade Emperor as well as that of taoism was largely made in bad faith. 

Oddly, searching the very large Journey to the West research site, I haven't spotted yet an article just about the Jade Emperor.  Maybe I'm not looking hard enough. 

Update:   I just realised that there is a small Taoist temple in Singapore that I haven't seen which is dedicated to the Jade Emperor.   I know the city so well that I can tell from the map that, while I have been all around that area, I haven't walked down that particular street where it is.   I think this is a good enough reason to return again soon.  :)