A monkey is born from a stone and ends by mustering an army. In the Chinese compilation drawn from the Hsi Yu Chi (published 1922), an egg forms at the summit of a mountain and, "fructified by the breath of the wind", "gave birth to a stone monkey", whose eyes shoot "golden streaks of lightning" bright enough to fill the palace of the North Pole Star. This creature — Sun Hou-tzu, the Monkey Fairy — leaps and gambols across the peaks until his exploits cause him "to be proclaimed king" of the monkeys, and he sets out to make himself immortal.

The army arrives when the king comes home. Returning to Hua-kuo Shan, Sun slays the demon Hun-shih Mo-wang, "who had been molesting the monkeys during his long absence", and then does the thing that earns this motif its place on the shelf: "he organized his subjects into a regular army, 47,000 all told". With that muster "the peace of the simian kingdom was assured". The host of apes is not a mob but a standing force, numbered and drilled, the wild creatures of the mountain marshaled under a single ruler born of rock and wind.

Stith Thompson (1885–1976), the American folklorist whose motif-index gives this address its number, files an army of apes with witnesses from Hindu, Indian, and Chinese tradition; only this Chinese one, the tale of how the monkey became a god, is wired to served text today, while his Hindu and Indian authorities wait unread. What does a myth ask us to feel when the disorderly creature of the forest turns commander and fields an army of its own kind?