The first issue of the Boatman Chat Water Margin series, the full text is 2700 words
Only by reading the name of "Water Margin" can we truly read this novel, read the thoughts and emotions that the author wants to express, and understand the pursuit of the characters in the story.
In short, the name is not simple.
I remember that the father Jiang Defu in the TV series "Parental Love" deliberately pronounced the hu (hǔ) in "Water Margin" as (xǔ) in a chat with his mother Anjie, in order to ridicule this capitalist lady for being too arrogant, in fact, this is indeed a polysyllabic word, only because it is rarely used in life, so there are often times when it is mispronounced.
The problem is that the names of "Dream of the Red Chamber", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Journey to the West" in the four famous works are very concise and clear, and the names used are also commonly used words, and the names of "Water Margin" are too out of place compared with the first three, because not only do they use strange characters, but the meaning of the combination is also difficult to understand.
Do not underestimate this, a simple and easy-to-understand name can be very important in ancient times when literacy rates were very low, and it was an important factor in the wide dissemination of works. Especially literary masterpieces like "Water Margin", after the imperfections of the Ming and Qing dynasties, especially through the hands of Jin Shengsi, a great talent like the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, I believe that they will not find this problem, so why does no one dare to move its name?
To know that Jin Shengsi even made a big stroke of the pen, the "Water Margin" was deleted for the last forty times, which can be called a waist chop, that is, such a cruel person did not dare to move the name of "Water Margin", then there is only one possibility, that is, the name of "Water Margin" has a deep meaning and has been collectively recognized by the literati of the ancients.
What is the meaning of the word "Water Margin"?
The original meaning of "Water Margin" is the meaning of the water's edge, so when "Water Margin" was translated into foreign languages in previous years, it was directly translated into "the story that happened at the water's edge", which is simply too vulgar, and even can be said to be bottomless. If you want to restore the truth of the connotation of the name of "Water Margin", you can't simply limit yourself to the text itself, but you have to transpose to the humanistic environment in which the ancients lived, so what books did the ancients read?
Four words: Four Books and Five Classics, that is, the must-see textbook for ancient literati to prepare for the examination and write the Eight Strands of Literature: the Four Books composed of "University", "Zhongyong", "Analects" and "Mencius", and the Five Classics composed of "Book of Poetry", "Shang Shu", "Li Ji", "Zhou Yi", and "Spring and Autumn".
The Four Books and Five Classics are not only important to the literati, but also closely related to the lives of the people, for example, when the ancients named their children, they paid attention to it: the text "Analects", the Wu "Zhou Yi", the male "Book of Poetry", and the female "Chu Ci". Not only do the people like to find names from these books, but the literati are even more fond of them, and they must try to rub the edge ball with the Four Books and Five Classics when they open their mouths and close their mouths.
The people who wrote "Water Margin" may have thought the same way, so from these books, we may be able to find out the origin of the name of "Water Margin", and the people who think so are not only me, in fact, there have been predecessors who have done this for a long time.
In 1944, luo Ergang, a famous historian in modern times, discovered the use of the word "Water Margin" in the "Book of Poetry, Daya Xuan (Traditional Characters of Cotton)", and he took the lead in proposing that the meaning of "Water Margin" may be related to such a story. The poem discovered by Luo Ergang is an epic poem about the origin of the Zhou Dynasty nation, with nine chapters and six sentences in each chapter, of which the word "Water Margin" is mentioned in the second chapter, which reads as follows:
Father Gu Gong (Note 1), came to the horse. Rate West Water Margin, as for Qixia. Ye and Jiang Nu, Nie Lai Xu Yu.
The gist is that the ancestor of the Zhou Dynasty, Gu Gonggong, set off early in the morning to catch his horse, went straight west along the riverbank, came to the foot of Qishan Mountain (settled), and then married the daughter of the Jiang clan and chose a place to live according to local conditions. At first glance, this description of the word "Water Margin" seems to be nothing big, and if you really think so, it is very wrong, because we have to analyze the behavior of the ancient GongGong Father in light of the external environment in which the Zhou tribe was located at that time.
Sure enough, in the "History of Zhou Benji" compiled by Sima Qian, the historical background of the ancient gonggong's father when he moved to Qishan was described in detail, and the original text is as follows:
Father Gu Gong... Accumulate virtue and righteousness, and all the people of the country wear it. Xūn yù attacked it, wanted to get his possessions, and gave them. He has resumed his attack, and wants to gain the land and the people. The people are angry and want to fight. Gu Gong... It is with his private subordinates to go to Qi ((bīn)), degree lacquer, depression (jù), over Liangshan, and stop at Qixia. The people of the country, help the old and the weak, and return to the ancient gong Yuqi.
The general meaning of this sentence is that the father of the ancient gonggong usually lived a very good moral discipline, the mass base is very good, so it is very popular with the clan, when the northern nomadic people Kaoru and Rong Di came to harass the Zhou tribe, the Zhou tribe, whose combat effectiveness was not as good as the nomadic people, chose to compromise and sold a part of the property, and it was not long before these nomads came to harass again, and became more greedy, trying to completely occupy the land and population of the Zhou tribe, women and children became slaves, and the people of the Zhou tribe began to want to resist.
At this time, as the leader, Gu Gong's father chose to lead his close relatives first, and traveled a long way across Liangshan to the foot of Qishan Mountain, and the people of the bīn land gave up their plan to fight with the nomads, and also followed the footsteps of Gu Gong's father and migrated to Qishan.
It turned out that the reason why Gu Gonggong's father moved to Qishan was because he was threatened by nomads, and the entire tribe would face the test of life and death, so it was urgent to find a new way out. However, the Zhou people, who did not yet have a sound organizational structure, did not form a unified opinion at one time, but gradually migrated to the new place of residence under the influence of the ancient father (see note 2) with the inspiration of action and the attraction of vision.
This is not only a story of a group of people looking for a way out, but also describes how a person becomes a leader through "induction" and "vision", the so-called leader is not born, but he grew up the day after tomorrow, he needs to lead everyone to find a way out and find the other shore in a critical moment.
The unknown prospect of the ancient gonggong father in the "Book of Poetry" leading the clan to find is "Water Margin", and "Water Margin" thus has the meaning of representing the way out, combined with the word "Liangshan" mentioned in the "History of Zhou Benji", it is not difficult to see that Shi Nai'an borrowed the name of "Water Margin" from the "Book of Poetry".
A good man who goes to Liangshan, or is suppressed by the magnates, or because the road is uneven, wanted by the government, or is framed by people, every good man in Liangshan has encountered his own life choices, to put it more accurately, that is, he needs to find a way out for his future. At this time, Song Jiang impressed everyone with his personal name and the trip of benevolence and righteousness, and at the same time depicted the "beautiful" vision of Zhao'an, and found a way out for the brothers to the greatest extent, so there was this wonderful and tragic Water Margin story.
But in addition to the most sunny side of the story, there is also an unseemly other side behind the sun.
Because normally, as a leader, the ancient father should lead the clan to rise up and defend the homeland. Unexpectedly, this ancestor of the Zhou Dynasty actually led his family to run away without a word, and the people of the Zhou tribe who realized it after seeing that the leading big brother had run away, did not hurry to keep up, so the entire Zhou tribe settled in Qishan, without the slightest intention of taking home.
Everyone sees that this description is not very familiar, yes, when the Northern Song Dynasty was threatened by the northern nomads and fishermen and hunters, it did not choose to resist but chose to spend money to buy peace, not to think that the appetite of the Jin Dynasty was getting bigger and bigger, and even wanted to completely occupy the territory of the Song Dynasty and enslave the song dynasty people through the hierarchy.
At this time, King Zhao of Kang, later Emperor Gaozong of Song, fled to the south to hide, and for the rest of his life he simply lay flat, and like Gu Gong's father, he had no intention of taking home. The story of the escape of the father of the ancient Gonggong and the story of the northern Song Dynasty's destruction of the Southern Song Dynasty are really too similar, and the name "Water Margin" is, to some extent, a metaphor for the national disaster before and after the Jing Kang Disaster.
After the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, the people found that both Song Jiang and Fang La caused civil unrest when the country was threatened and harassed by nomads, which invisibly helped the northern nomads to invade the south, and eventually everyone became losers. It is precisely because of this clearly that the people after the Southern Song Dynasty urgently want to return to the past, incarnate into the former mountain bandits, put aside internal contradictions when the nation is in danger, and jointly resist strong enemies.
Therefore, according to the popular cognition of people now, the name "Water Margin" for the ancients, is equivalent to the familiar "Rebirth of Jingkang Difficulty", "Rebirth of me in the Northern Song Dynasty as a mountain thief", so it is estimated that everyone is easy to understand, only because the language environment and culture of the ancients and today's people have undergone great changes, some seemingly obscure words, perhaps expressing the same meaning as the current popular language.
About the origin of the name of water margin, let's talk about it here, and then there will be more exciting content, and we will not see it in the next program
Note 1: Gong Qi's father, also known as King Tai of Zhou, was not only the sixteenth grandson of the Yellow Emperor of Xuanyuan, but also the grandfather of King Wen of Zhou, the founder of the Zhou Dynasty, the leader of the ancient Zhou clan, and the monarch of Xibo.