Bai Longma- Chinese DragonDragon"Third Prince of the Western Sea"

The Pearl and the Sentence

Ao Yulong, Third Prince of the Dragon King Ao Run of the Western Sea, destroyed a luminous pearl given to his father by the Jade Emperor. Whether through rage or carelessness, the act was unforgivable, and the prince was condemned to death. The bodhisattva Guanyin intervened, persuading the Jade Emperor to commute the sentence on a single condition: the dragon prince would transform into a white horse and serve as mount for the monk Xuanzang on his pilgrimage to retrieve Buddhist scriptures from India.

Waiting at Eagle Grief Stream along the pilgrimage route, the dragon prince attacked the travelers, not recognizing them as his charge. He swallowed Xuanzang's original horse before Guanyin arrived to clarify his mission. Ao Yulong was then transformed into a white horse identical to the one he had consumed, and the journey began. For fourteen years and 108,000 lǐ, the dragon prince carried Xuanzang on his back through every hardship the other disciples faced, trapped in the form of an animal that could neither speak nor fight.

The Dragon Beneath the Horse

Bai Long Ma is the most silent member of the pilgrimage. He rarely speaks and fights only once, when all three disciples were absent and Xuanzang was captured by a demon. The dragon prince reverted to his true form, fought to rescue his master, and was outmatched and wounded. But beneath the horse's patience lived a dragon who would break his silence when his master's life demanded it.

When the pilgrimage ended, the Buddha rewarded Bai Long Ma alongside the other disciples. He was transformed into one of the Heavenly Dragons and coiled around a pillar of the Thunder Monastery, his dragon form restored permanently. The prince who had been sentenced to die for shattering a pearl spent fourteen years as a beast of burden and emerged as a guardian of the dharma.