guards open to bribery, corruption, calculated brutality, and negligence to duty and to the law.
The portrayal of the most strident of the rebels among the Liangshan Marsh bandits as the most upright of Confucian characters is juxtaposed against the corruption of officials, the abuse of power, sexual infidelity, and moral decay. In doing so, we are reminded of the consequences of the collapse of reciprocal expression of loyalty, fidelity, and benevolence from the state. Therefore when we view the characters and the storyline in The Water Margin through the context of rigid Confucian values, we begin to appreciate the “virtue” in some of the seeming “unvirtuous” heroes. In Song Jiang, the eventual head of the Liangshan bandits, we have a clear model of Confucian virtue. A clerk of a county magistrate’s court (and therefore a genuine Confucian archetype), Song Jiang is renowned throughout the land for his filial piety, benevolence, compassion, and generosity; he is the help of the poor and the helpless. Even after he accidentally kills his greedy mistress (whom he keeps out of compassion for her poverty) and is forced into banditry to escape corrupt officials, Song Jiang yearns for Imperial amnesty and a chance to resume his Imperial service. Similarly, the clearly virtuous heroes such as Lu Junyi, Lin Chong, Wu Song, and Dai Zong also become outlaws when they become the unfortunate victims of corrupt officials or commit crimes in the name of Confucian virtue against the unvirtuous or the corrupt. In contrast to these exemplars of virtue, it is sometimes harder to see the virtue in the vulgar, hard drinking, hard swearing, and hard fighting characters of Lu Da (Zhishen) and Li Kui. However, underneath the surface we do see their virtue shining through, despite their rough and sometime brutal personae. While they may be rough and ready soldiers, they are undoubtedly loyal and righteous—Lu Da is a help of the helpless, and Li Kui really does love his mother.
Commentary and editorship of Jin Shengtan
The authorship of The Water Margin is normally ascribed to Shi Naian (ca. 1296–1372 CE), though there has been substantial debate as to its true authorship. Some commentators consider Shi Naian as a non de plume of Luo Guanzhong (ca. 1315–1400 CE), the author of Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo Yanyi), while yet other commentators consider The Water Margin to be a collaborative effort between Shi Naian and Luo Guanzhong.14 Throughout the Ming Dynasty, The Water Margin was further edited and commented upon by various editors until it reached its most definitive form in the 120 Chapter version edited by Li Zhi ca.1592.15 In the two hundred and fifty odd years until 1641, the story of the Liangshan Marsh bandits followed the adventures of the heroes becoming outlaws, rebelling against the corruption of local officials and then being amnestied and pardoned before entering the service of the Imperial government.
However, in 1641, Jin Shengtan published the penultimate evolution of The Water Margin by excising the final fifty chapters of the text where the Liangshan bandits gain their pardon and enter into the Imperial service. Jin Shengtan’s 70 Chapter version, complete with his extensive commentaries and interpretations, provided the most conceptually and literally unified version of the story to date. By its very nature as a collection of historiography, oral stories, and folk tales, the previous versions of The Water Margin lacked a degree of intellectual and literary cohesion. In his editing and commentary, Jin Shengtan consolidated The Water Margin and produced a version which not only illustrated the notion of Confucian virtue among the bandits, but also very clearly condemned banditry and rebellion. In Jin’s version, despite the expressions of Confucian virtue and the dreams of an Imperial pardon by bandit leaders such as Song Jiang or the “big talk” of the likes of Li Kui of overthrowing the Song Emperor and establishing a new dynasty, the ultimate fate of the bandits is very clear. In Jin’s revision of The Water Margin text and his extensive commentaries, there is only one fate for outlaws.
In Jin Shengtan’s preface to his edition, Jin not only condemns the bandits as a group, but also condemns the work of prior authors and editors for stressing the virtues of loyalty and righteousness in the conduct of the bandits.16 Jin Shengtan’s editing of the story went as far as even composing the closing scene that unambiguously stamps his “authorship” onto the 70 Chapter version. In this final scene, bandit leader Lu Junyi, on the very night of the banquet celebrating the destruction of the corrupt local officials that would otherwise conclude the novel, dreams of the execution of the bandit leaders. As he looks up just before his execution he sees a sign which states “Universal peace throughout the kingdom.” Jin Shengtan’s message is crystal clear. With shocking abruptness, the reader—enthralled with the story and expecting more from the triumphant and vindicated bandits, such as the long awaited Imperial pardon or the appointments to Imperial service by a grateful Emperor—is confronted with a stark moral lesson.17 Despite the portrayal of the worthy band as righteous and virtuous heroes, there are in fact, no amnesties or pardons for outlaws, bandits, and rebels.
While Jin Shengtan evidently sympathized with the misfortunes of some of the bandits and even admired them as individuals, Jin’s sympathy for the individual characters is weighted against his unambiguous condemnation of outlawlessness and banditry.18 This is the key to understanding the oscillation between Jin’s ambivalence and sympathy, which is so apparent in his treatment of The Water Margin that it survives even the most stringent reworking of J.H. Jackson’s translation. In Jackson’s translation of The Water Margin we can still read Jin’s working of the story, such as his undermining of Song Jiang’s values of loyalty and justice at every turn, by contrasting it with expressions of callousness and barbarism, both on the deserving and the innocent.
In understanding the nature of the drastic editing and revision of Jin Shengtan’s Water Margin story, we need to consider the time in which Jin was working on this text and the nature of the man himself. Jin Shengtan’s 70 Chapter version was published in 1641, which was the version first translated in English by Pearl Buck as All Men Are Brothers (1933) and the basis of this translation, The Water Margin by J.H. Jackson (1937).19 At the time of the publication of Jin’s 70 Chapter version in 1641, the once great Ming Dynasty was in its terminal years. In 1630, Li Zicheng of Yanan in northern Shaanxi province (which features early in The Water Margin and again prominently in later Chinese history), led a peasant uprising against corrupt local officials, against a backdrop of a terrible famine. Raising a large army, Li Zicheng’s peasant rebellion ravaged a large part of northern China, while the Ming armies, underpaid and suffering from poor morale, in addition to the simultaneous problem of facing the invading Manchus in the northeast, were unable to suppress the rebellion. In 1644 Li Zicheng’s armies entered the Ming capital of Beijing without opposition, where the last Ming Emperor, Chongzhen hanged himself. In the same period, Zhang Xianzhong led an uprising against the Ming which ravaged southwestern Sichuan province and left it devastated for decades to come. Against the background of the social chaos and disorder accompanying the fall of the Ming Dynasty, it is little wonder that Jin Shengtan professed such ambivalence against the bandits of The Water Margin.
Born in 1610 in a poor family of the scholarly gentry class, Jin Shengtan received an education at a village school, rather than by a private tutor. As was normal in pre-modern China, Jin Shengtan received an education in the Confucian classics, in part directly from his father, a scholar, which naturally provided him with the necessary knowledge of Confucianism to enable him to ultimately pass his county level xiucai degree in the Imperial examination system. Why he did not pursue or achieve an advanced level degree at the provincial or Imperial Court level is unknown, but there are perhaps clues to this in his ultimate choice of a literary career. Unlike other scholars, Jin eschewed the Confucian classics, having been bored with them since childhood and preferring to delve into the vulgar realm of popular vernacular novels, armed in part with an appreciation of Buddhist and Taoist literary works, which he read as a child during periods of illness from school.20 Having obtained his xiucai
