The King and the Corpse is a wondrous tale that is meant to represent the journey of the soul through life, or more specifically, as the full title reveals, the soul's struggle with good and evil, and it's attempts to understand either.  The purpose of king's story in the book is meant to reveal the true nature of life's journey, the corpse flying miraculously back to the tree every time the king attempted to answer a question.  Whether or not the king was correct in his answers to the riddles was inconsequential, the spirit within the corpse was imparting a life lesson to the king, the long walk back to the necromancer paralleling the life-long journey that is searching for answers to questions, the king's responses mattered little to the spirit in the corpse because he was testing the king's ability to understand life is meant to be experienced, not to have definitive answers.  Yet even in the ambiguity of the corpse's message, I see the moral guidance the story attempts to impart.  The king's tale may be a gentle guide to understanding the nature of one's soul and in doing so conjures up several other similarities between itself and other religious theologies at large.

     The opening reminds me of the fall of man, the monkey acting outside the expected decorum, not disobeying God but disregarding any royal rules of conduct in sitting on and disrupting the king.  The monkey came from the women's apartments, which lends the monkey the ability to become a manifestation of women.  The moment of great revealing (although the revelation of the necromancer's intention is, as well) comes when the monkey bites into the fruit, which similar to the Christian creation story, is a nondescript species of fruit.  There are also elements of the resurrection, the king freeing the spirits of the grounds, and the necromancer's intention to enslave a newly-risen corpse.  All religious allegories deal with man's struggle within and without himself against the state of his soul, each attempting to ingrain morality and life lessons, which is why I think the King and the Corpse is just as much a religious narrative, as it is an allegory for improving one's journey through life itself.