Water Margin
Water Margin is one of the earliest Chinese novels written in vernacular Mandarin, and is attributed to Shi Nai'an. It is also translated as Outlaws of the Marsh and All Men Are Brothers.
A page from a block-printed version of the novel Water Margin, brought to Copenhagen, Denmark in the early part of the 17th-century | |
| Author | Shi Nai'an (subject to academic debate) |
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| Original title | 水滸傳 |
| Country | China |
| Language | Written vernacular Chinese |
| Genre | Historical fiction |
| Set in | Mount Liang, c. 1120 |
Publication date | Uncertain, perhaps mid-14th century; definitely before 1524 |
Published in English | 1937, 1980, and 1994–2002 |
| 895.1346 | |
Original text | 水滸傳 at Chinese Wikisource |
| Water Margin | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"Water Margin" in Traditional (top) and Simplified (bottom) Chinese characters | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 水滸傳 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 水浒传 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | "Water Margin Story" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The story, which is set in the Northern Song dynasty (around 1120), tells of how a group of 108 outlaws gathers at Mount Liang (or Liangshan Marsh) to rebel against the government. Later they are granted amnesty and enlisted by the government to resist the nomadic conquest of the Liao dynasty and other rebels. While the book's authorship is traditionally attributed to Shi Nai'an (1296–1372), the first external reference to the novel only appeared in 1524 during the Jiajing reign of the Ming dynasty, sparking a long-lasting academic debate on when it was actually written and which historical events the author had witnessed that inspired him to write the book.
The novel is considered one of the masterpieces of early vernacular fiction and Chinese literature. It has introduced readers to many of the best-known characters in Chinese literature, such as Wu Song, Lin Chong, Pan Jinlian, Song Jiang and Lu Zhishen. Water Margin also exerted a significant influence in the development of fiction elsewhere in East Asia, such as in Japanese literature.