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Text: Xian Yan
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introduction
I believe that everyone has such an experience, when they were in school, they firmly believed in the knowledge in books, and when they grew up, they found that many "conclusions" did not reach a consensus in the academic community.
For example, the "unsupportable Adou" has been considered a cowardly and incompetent monarch since ancient times, but Liu Chan ascended the throne in 223 AD and served as emperor for a total of 40 years until the fall of Shu Han in 263 AD, while Kangxi, the longest reigning man in Chinese history, was only 61 years.
(Portrait of Liu Chan)
And what I want to talk about today is Shi Nai'an and his book Water Margin, which is also a textbook, and there are many controversies in the historical circles.
1. Shi Nai'an's delayed "hukou" is a dispute that has been pending for hundreds of years
In recent years, cultural tourism in various places has been digging deep into the highlights of local cultural tourism, and the "hometown of Shi Nai'an" promoted by Xinghua Baiju has aroused discussion among some history lovers.
They questioned Shi Nai'an's ancestral hometown Xinghua Baiju with all their heart, citing scriptures, believing that Shi Nai'an's ancestral hometown Xinghua was just made up by the Xinghua Shi family during the Qianlong period in order to "put gold on their faces" for their ancestors.
Some people believe that in order to make their ancestors "promising", the Xinghua Shi family imposed the word "Nai'an" on an ancestor named "Shi Yanduan", and "sealed" him the glory of "Yuan Dynasty Xinwei Kejinshi".
Between the lines, they are very disgusted with the Shi family's behavior of "climbing the dragon and attaching the phoenix", and some people vividly describe the scene of this "apocryphal genealogy" more than 200 years ago, as if they witnessed this incident with their own eyes.
(Xinghua Shi Nai'an Cemetery)
Putting aside the subjective likes and dislikes of "entrainment of private work", the evidence they cite is indeed worth exploring:
First, it is recorded in the family tree of Baiju Shi that Shi Nai'an was a "Xin Wei Ke Jinshi of the Yuan Dynasty", but in the official history, the Yuan Dynasty did not open the imperial examination in the Xin Wei year;
Second, the wording of "Shi Nai'an's Epitaph" as circumstantial evidence is shallow, full of errors and omissions, and the content format is very different from the epitaph of the Ming Dynasty;
Third, in 1952, the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China specially sent people to Baiju for investigation, believing that Baiju's information was unreliable;
Fourth, in 1982, the relevant departments organized cultural experts such as Zhou Shaoliang and Qi Gong to participate in the appraisal, and also came to the conclusion that there was no evidence that Shi Yanduan of the Baiju Shi family was related to Shi Nai'an.
These netizens believe that these four points alone can confirm the behavior of the Xinghua Baiju Shi family of "falsifying family trees and deceiving Chinese for hundreds of years".
Is this really the case?
(Statue of Shi Nai'an)
Second, the literature that reverses right and wrong, and Shi Nai'an, who is famous in the Great Zhou Dynasty
As with many historical and cultural issues, although the life and death of Shi Nai'an are described in detail in our textbooks, this is still an unanswered question in the field of historiography. However, the four questions raised by netizens about the Baiju Shi family are easy to overturn.
According to the "Investigation on Shi Nai'an's Life History" published by "Beijing Daily" and the "Dafeng Daily" published by Dafeng District, Yancheng City, "Our District Held a Symposium to Commemorate the 70th Anniversary of Shi Nai'an's Life Investigation and <施耐庵文物史料考察报告>the 40th Anniversary of Publication" published by the Central Ministry of Culture:
In 1952, three investigators of the Ministry of Culture's investigation team, Qian Feng, Xie Xingyao and Xu Fang, clearly wrote that "Shi Nai'an is from Xinghua";
After the investigation in 1982, 16 scholars jointly wrote the "Report on the Investigation of the Cultural Relics and Historical Materials of Shi Nai'an, the Author of the 'Water Margin' Newly Discovered in Jiangsu Province", which affirmed this view.
(Water Margin Heroes)
And this is just the opposite of the above-mentioned netizens' quotation description, whether it is the netizen citation and expression error, or another reason, it is unknown. These two reports more rigorously admit that "it is understandable that there are some differences in understanding in the academic community" in the "Epitaph".
Dou Yingyuan, director of the Shi Nai'an Memorial Hall in Dafeng District, Xinghua, is more frank, he believes that Shi Nai'an's ancestral home is indeed not Xinghua, but Hangzhou, Zhejiang, but Shi Nai'an himself should have been born and lived in Baiju for a long time.
In the middle and late Yuan Dynasty where Shi Nai'an lived, Zhang Shicheng, a native of Baiju, established the "Great Zhou" regime in Gaoyou, and in order to win the hearts of the people, he directly rewarded a large number of scholars as Jinshi.
In other words, although Shi Nai'an lived in the last years of the Yuan Dynasty, he was most likely a jinshi of Zhang Shicheng's "Great Zhou".
(Portrait of Zhang Shicheng)
3. Qianlong's literary prison, Xinghua Baiju Shi's record of clearing grievances
There is one of the biggest loopholes in the remarks questioning Shi Nai'an's ancestral hometown of Xinghua, that is, these skeptics claim that "the Xinghua Baiju Shi family is to cling to celebrities and add color to their ancestors".
Shi Nai'an's "Water Margin" is listed as one of the four great Chinese masterpieces in modern times, which makes many people mistakenly believe that this status is "since ancient times".
But in fact, in 1777, when netizens claimed that genealogical fraud occurred, novels and scripts were quite despicable literary forms, and they were not even considered "literary" in the eyes of the mainstream.
For a long time, novels were scripts, and the reason why scripts were called scripts was scripts written by low-level readers for storytellers or performers in order to support their families. The little talk book has no literary status, and Shi Nai'an, as the author of the little talk book, naturally cannot be a celebrity who attracts others to cling to it.
(The collection of novels "Qingping Shantang Script")
Moreover, "Water Margin" is generally believed to have been written in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties, but it was banned for most of the Ming and Qing dynasties. In particular, the literary prison lasted almost for nearly 250 years in the Qing Dynasty, and in 1751, 1753, 1768, 1772, 1776, and 1780 during the Qianlong period, there were six large-scale literary prisons.
In such a grim situation, it is indeed not wise to "cling" the author of the banned book to his ancestors.
From these evidences, we can at least avenge the grievances of the Baiju Shi family for "tampering with the genealogy" and "climbing the dragon and attaching the phoenix", and Shi Nai'an will not have a clan that cannot be returned, and there is incense that cannot be enjoyed.
(The Three Emperors of Kang Yongqian, the most prosperous prison of words)
Then another problem arises, "Water Margin" has always been evaluated as "satirizing the past and the present, revealing the dire life of the people at the bottom, and making a powerful critique of the Ming Dynasty society", which seems untenable.
Fourth, people who only lived in the Ming Dynasty for 2 years scolded the officials in the middle and late Ming Dynasty
Historians and history buffs generally agree that the Qing Dynasty spared no effort to discredit the Ming Dynasty in compiling its history and literary creation, even to the point of demonizing it. The most powerful evidence is that the "History of the Ming Dynasty" compiled by the Qing Dynasty states that Emperor Chongzhen slaughtered Zhang Xianzhong in the Ming Dynasty, and the number of victims was "sixty thousand (600 million)".
In the last few thousand years of Chinese history, the most populous Qing Dynasty was only 40 million (400 million), and some people say that 60,000 is just an exaggeration, but the only imaginary numbers commonly used in Chinese exaggeration are "three" and "nine".
(Demographic Statistics of China by Dynasties)
In recent years, many literary researchers and historians have believed that "Water Margin" has been revised many times after it was written, and many parts of "targeted criticism" of the Ming Dynasty have been added. It is generally accepted that Shi Nai'an was born and died between 1296 and 1370 AD, and the Ming Dynasty was established in 1368, two years before Shi Nai'an's death. In other words, Shi Nai'an only lived in the Ming Dynasty for 2 years.
However, the version of "Water Margin" that is circulating now contains many phenomena that appeared in the middle and late Ming Dynasty and prevailed in the Qing Dynasty.
For example, the heroes of Liangshan went out to the restaurant and threw out a dime of silver to settle the bill, while in the Song Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty, gold and silver were forbidden by the imperial court to circulate among the people; in the early Ming Dynasty, they all needed to be guided to go out, and the heroes of Liangshan in various places visited each other and were found to be assassinated, which was unimaginable in Shi Nai'an's life. These people in the early Ming Dynasty scolded the officials in the late Ming Dynasty, which was obviously a ridiculous farce.
(In the film and television work "Water Margin", Lu Qian took out two ingots of silver to ask the official to do something)
For us now, it is difficult to say that the life of Shi Nai'an of the Qing Dynasty has not been handed down, whether it is because the novel did not enter the stream at that time, or whether the Ming and Qing dynasties banned the destruction of "Water Margin".
But in any case, many times humanistic history pays attention to "self-consistency". As long as there is evidence and the guests and hosts are happy, it doesn't matter so much where Shi Nai'an is from.
Resources:
Jiang Yin.Forgery and fabrication in genealogy[J].Chinese Classics and Culture, 1993(3):2.
Anonymous.Shi Nai'an's new discovery of family history research[J].Jianghai Journal, 1982.