Heaven in this record is a court with a throne, and the throne has an occupant — until an upstart decides he would rather sit there himself. The fourteenth chapter of Myths & Legends of China, the collection published in 1922, retells the Chinese romance of how the monkey Sun clawed his way toward godhood. Sun forces his way into the celestial bureaucracy, is fobbed off with the mock-post of "Grand Master of the Heavenly Stables", and, once he grasps the insult, "arrogated to himself the pompous title of Grand Saint, Governor of Heaven". He "broke down the South Gate of Heaven" and threatens to unseat the sky's ruler outright.

That ruler is Yü Huang, whom the shelf calls "the Master of Heaven" and, in the Buddha's mouth, "his Supreme Majesty the Pearly Emperor". With his armies beaten back, Yü Huang, "at the end of his resources", summons the Buddha, who confronts the rebel: "Why do you wish to possess yourself of the Kingdom of the Heavens?" The monkey's answer is the motif laid bare — "Have I not power enough to be the God of Heaven?" The god of heaven is defined here less by what he is than by what a challenger must topple to replace him: a sovereignty of the sky that could, in principle, change hands.

The sky-god surfaces on our shelf only glancingly, framed by the monkey's ambition rather than by any rite or hymn of his own, and the other witnesses the American folklorist Stith Thompson (1885–1976), whose index gives this shape its number, gathered under it — an Icelandic Odin, an Armenian sky, a Pawnee "Father Heaven" — wait unread. What does it mean that the highest seat in heaven is pictured as a throne some clever enough creature might simply climb into?