5 Ibid.
6 J.H. Jackson, Water Margin, Vol 1, 5th Edition. (The Commercial Press Ltd, Hong Kong. 1976). p282.
7 Sidney Shapiro, Outlaws of the Marsh, Written by Shi Nai’an and Luo Guanzhong. Translated by Sidney Shapiro. Vol. 1 & 2 (Indiana University Press and Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1981).
8 John Dent-Young and Alex Dent-Young, Iron Ox: Part Four of The Marshes of Mount Liang. A new translation of the Shuihu zhuan or Water Margin of Shi Nai’an and Luo Guanzhong. (Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 2002). p82.
Dedication
To little Harry,
25th Generation of the Liu clan of Zhongshan, Guangdong;
5th Generation of the Lowe family of Sydney, Australia;
67th generation descendant of Liu Bang,
The leader of the bandit rebellion who slew the snake near Mount Mangdan and who became Gaozu, the first Emperor of the Han Dynasty in 202 BCE;
with love.
Introduction
“The young should not read The Water Margin, and the old should not read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.”
The power of literature in the tradition of the “Four Great Novels” of China, is such that this popular axiom acts as a warning about the nexus of fiction and politics in the Chinese tradition.9 Not only does this axiom warn against the nature of the plots and contents of two of these novels, but in doing so it also serves to illustrate the way that these novels have mirrored and at times, shaped the very course of Chinese history itself. In the Confucian society of China, the themes contained in these great novels—of loyalty, righteousness, and brotherhood, were a dangerous source of inspiration and example. Drawing upon those fundamental threads of Confucian values, for the old, the intrigues of strategy, politics, and war in Romance of the Three Kingdoms are a dangerous source of inspiration for those who seek glory when they should be better wisely governing the state. To the young, the gravity of those fundamental Confucian values, mixed with the heady tales of heroes, acts of justice and revenge against corrupt officials, The Water Margin could only teach the most dangerous of the Confucian values—the right to rebellion.
The Water Margin (Shuihu Zhuan) was first published as a novel ca.1368 CE, at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. Compiled from a variety of plot lines from oral storytelling and Yuan Dynasty dramas, The Water Margin is based on the historical bandit, Song Jiang and his followers who were active during the reign of the Huizong Emperor (1100–1126 CE) during the Song Dynasty. Edited and reconceived as a vernacular novel amidst the chaos of the final years of the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, The Water Margin was published in a period marked by grinding poverty and suffering for the peasant population, of lawlessness and disorder of a society and government in disarray, and of large scale peasant uprisings against the Mongol occupation of the Yuan. Like the historical Song Jiang, The Water Margin follows the fortunes and adventures of the bandits of Liangshan Marsh, set in the final years of the Northern Song period in the reign of the Huizong Emperor, shortly before the loss of northern China to the invading Jurchens. The 108 bandit leaders are a disparate group originating from every level of society, ranging from minor officials of the Imperial civil service, the scholarly gentry, and Imperial army officers to assorted Taoist and Buddhists clerics, policemen, inn keepers, and soldiers. Despite their different origins, they are united as upright and virtuous Confucians, driven to become outlaws or refugees from a harsh, unjust society and the corrupt officials of the Song government. Beloved by ordinary people and feared by officials, the bandits sally forth from the marshes surrounding their base at Mount Liang (Liangshan), to restore justice and order to the land. Robbing from the rich and the corrupt and redistributing to the poor and the virtuous, the bandits of Liangshan Marsh act in the name of loyalty to the Emperor of the Song, whom they believe to be shielded to the injustices of his corrupt officials and the suffering of his subjects.
The Water Margin, like many of the vernacular novels of this new literary form of the Ming Dynasty shares a common thread of embellishing and further mythologizing known or acknowledged historical events, mixing historiography with fiction, folk tales, and popular legend. Most importantly these historical novels, particularly The Water Margin, are framed within the context of the Confucian moral order, so that like the equally loved Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo Yanyi) our heroes, formed out of a band of sworn brothers, are the epitome of Confucian virtue, fighting against the evil and the unvirtuous. For the readers of Ming China, the themes of loyalty, righteousness, fidelity, and benevolence were the very fabric of the ethical values of the Confucian socio-political order. Much more than a simple story of righteous rebellion and virtuous bandits, The Water Margin is essentially a story about the expression of Confucian virtues. Despite the brutality and the violence on the surface of the story, the inherent values of Confucianism lend gravity and meaning to the story that remains one of the most beloved of the Four Classic Novels of Chinese literature some 650 years after its first publication. Even today, despite the best efforts of the radicalism of the Chinese intellectual revolutions of the 20th Century, these themes still ring at the core of the Chinese system of values.
At its core, the Confucian socio-political order is an ethical system based on a framework of reciprocal moral obligations and the observance of core values, based on the foundation works of Confucius (551–479 BCE) and Mencius (372–289 BCE). By the time of the Song Dynasty, through a syncretic adsorption of metaphysical concepts derived from Buddhism, Taoism, and folk beliefs, Confucianism had developed into an all encompassing ethical and moral system which emphasized social order and the role of the individual as a part of a greater social and cosmological whole. The individual’s role in the Confucian system was however, critical to the greater social whole and the Confucian system was based on an internalized individual self-regulation, rather than a system of external regulation such as a binding legal system. In the Confucian socio-political system, the individual was required to cultivate and regulate “the self,” ethically and morally through the observation of the virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety (eg ritual or etiquette), loyalty, wisdom, trust, and filial piety. The Confucian socio-political system was grounded in the Five Cardinal Relations, that is the key relationships between the ruler and minister; father and son; husband and wife; brother and brother; friend and friend. Socio-political order could only be brought about by the act of the individual actively cultivating these cardinal virtues and acting ethically and morally within the framework of the Five Cardinal Relations. Therefore through self-regulation, in accordance with Confucian values, socio-political order would radiate and diffuse outwards into the complex web of interpersonal relationships of society. It would begin with self-regulation then extend into the family and then outwards still between members of society, through the rigid strata of society between the ordinary people and the scholarly civil service (who were selected by merit on their knowledge and interpretation of the Confucian canon) and ultimately through to the Emperor himself. It was a system of socio-political order that was not only based upon the family, but moreover, it was a social-political system that was an extension of the family. This was not however, a one way flow of obligation. Harmony in society could only be obtained by the mutual and correct conduct of reciprocal obligations by all members of society. As in a family, the Emperor and the ruling elite of the Confucian scholars were expected to demonstrate, instruct, and exemplify Confucian virtue. Indeed above all others, the Emperor and his ministers were expected to be the paragons of Confucian virtue and behavior.
In a socio-political order based on the web of mutual expectations and reciprocal obligations, the political implications of this system