Patriarch Subhuti is a character in the novel Journey to the West. Wikidata names him Subhuti. The cited article says the full name is Patriarch Subhuti, with the Xu syllable. It then lists several real identities, including the Tathagata, Guanyin, and the Most High Lord Lao. They do not agree, so the title stays Patriarch Subhuti. This entry records him as a figure of Journey to the West.[1][2]
The pupil
He takes Sun Wukong as a disciple and teaches the seventy-two transformations, deathlessness, and the cloud somersault. He foresees that Wukong will make trouble, and he requires secrecy: the school and the old story of the training must never be mentioned. In chapter 1 a woodcutter points the Handsome Monkey King the way, and Wukong then meets him. The book presents him as a great immortal versed in both Daoism and Buddhism, of high powers and many disciples. People of the hills and wilds receive his teaching. He leads them toward the Way and also teaches ways of strengthening the body and calming the mind.[2]
The name, and later guesses
Commentators say Subhuti was a great disciple of the Tathagata, known for understanding emptiness, and that the Diamond Sutra is what the Buddha said to Subhuti. The name was not originally a title among immortals, and some take that to mean the immortal and the Buddha are one. The article also gathers guesses about who he really was. Some say the Tathagata, using among other things Wukong's later thought that he bowed only to the Buddha, to Guanyin, and to the teacher of the Mountain of the Two Boundaries, together with the Tathagata's awakening under the bodhi tree. Other guesses are Guanyin, the Most High Lord Lao, a junior fellow of the Tathagata, Subhuti among the Tathagata's ten great disciples, and a portrait of the author. Popular talk adds the Daoist Zhunti and the Primordial Heavenly Worthy. The article says the last of these mixes Journey to the West with Investiture of the Gods. The television series The Lotus Lantern and its prequel present Yuding Zhenren as an earlier or true form of Patriarch Subhuti. None of these accounts supplies one personal name to replace the title.[2]