Tag vernacular fiction

Archive #53 – PDFs of Outlaws of the Marsh (a.k.a. Water Margin) Foreign Language Press English Translation (Vols. 1-4)

Jim R. McClanahan Leave a comment

Note: My blog is not monetized, so I am not making any money from this post. My hope is that the PDF will make this legendary story more accessible to a wider audience. If you enjoyed the digital version, please, please, please support the official release.

Here I present a PDF of the 100-chapter Foreign Language Press four-volume boxed set of Outlaws of the Marsh (a.k.a. Water Margin, Shuihu zhuan, 水滸傳, c. 1400; “WM” hereafter) translated by Sidney Shapiro. Credited to Shi Nai’an and Luo Guanzhong, this classic Chinese military romance follows 108 heavenly and earthly spirits-reborn-heroes who band together and use their great physical or mental strengths to rebel against the falling Song Dynasty (960–1279). Some of the surviving members later accept clemency from the government and work to fight the barbarian hordes invading China. Few survive to old age.

I’m archiving this book because it has a deep connection with Journey to the West (Xiyouji, 西遊記, 1592; “JTTW” hereafter). Here are a few examples. First, the name and number of Sun Wukong‘s “Multitude of Terrestrial Killers” (Disha shu, 地煞數; a.k.a. his “72 kinds of transformations,” qishier ban bianhua, 七十二般變化) and Zhu Bajie’s “Multitude of Celestial Rectifiers” (Tiangang shu, 天罡數; a.k.a. his “36 kinds of transformations,” sanshiliu ban bianhua, 三十六般變化) are similar to that of the spirits mentioned above. [1] In WM ch. 2, they are called the “Stars of the 36 Celestial Rectifiers and of the 72 Terrestrial Killers—a total of 108 Demon Lords” (三十六員天罡星，七十二座地煞星，共是一百單八個魔君) (Meulenbeld, 2019, p. 5; Shi & Luo, 1975/2021, vol. 1,  p. 16). [2] Second, see my previous article analyzing the parallels between the Monkey King and the bandit Wu Song (武松). See also the sister article over at the Journey to the West Library blog. And third, I’ve previously suggested that Sun’s ploy to rescue the beleaguered wife of Zhu Bajie in JTTW ch. 18 is based on an event from WM ch. 5. Both feature:

  • Young, beautiful daughters in unwanted relationships (Green Orchid vs the unnamed maiden).
  • Elderly fathers worried for their child (Mr. Gao vs Mr. Liu).
  • Evil spirit-turned-inhumanly strong, hot-tempered, heavy metal staff-wielding martial monks who come to their aid (Sun Wukong vs Lu Zhishen).
  • The monk takes the place of the woman in a darkened room.
  • The villain is beaten (Zhu Bajie vs Zhou Tong) (Wu & Yu, 2012, vol. 1, pp. 374-377; Shi & Luo, 1993/2001, pp. 109-113).

This PDF will complement the translations that I’ve previously archived. These include the JTTW story cycle (here and here), the four-volume 2000 Library of Chinese Classics Chinese-English bilingual edition of Creation of the Gods (Fengshen yanyi, 封神演義, c. 1620 CE), a fan translation of Journey to the South (Nanyouji, 南遊記, c. 1570s-1580s), and the four-volume 2001 Foreign Language Press boxed set of Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi, 三國演義; lit: “Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” 14th century.).

Archive Link:

Click to access Outlaws-of-the-Marsh.pdf

Fig. 1 – The four covers of the boxed set edition (larger version). Image found here.

Notes:

1) Anthony C. Yu (Wu & Yu, 2012) translates these as the “Art of the Heavenly Ladle” and the “Art of the Earthly Multitude” (vol. 1, p. 122). I instead follow the translation used by Meulenbeld (2019). In regards to Tiangang (天罡), he explains: “In its exorcist manifestation, the Northern Dipper is known as gang 罡, which I translate here as ‘rectifier’ due to the ritual function it has in righting wrong” (Meulenbeld, 2019, p. 7). “Terrestrial Killers” is a direct translation of Disha (地煞).

2) Shapiro translates these as the “[t]hirty-six stars of Heavenly spirits and seventy two stars of Earthly Fiends, a total of one hundred and eight demons” (Shi & Luo, 2001, vol. 1, p. 16). Each of the 108 bandits is later associated with a particular star in WM ch. 71 (Shi & Luo, 2001, vol. 4, pp. 1499-1501; Shi & Luo, 1975/2021, vol. 3,  pp. 972-975).

Sources:

Meulenbeld, M. (2019). Vernacular “Fiction” and Celestial Script: A Daoist Manual for the Use of Water Margin. Religions, 10(9), 518. MDPI AG. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel10090518.

Shi, N., & Luo, G. (2001). Outlaws of the Marsh (Vols. 1-4) (S. Shapiro, Trans.). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. (Original work published 1993)

Shi, N., & Luo, G. (2021). Shuihu zhuan (shang, zhong, xia) [Tale of the Water Margin (Vols. 1-3)]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe. (Original work published 1975)

Wu, C., & Yu, A. C. (2012). The Journey to the West (Vols. 1-4) (Rev. ed.). Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

Archive #47: The Newly Annotated Journey to the West With Illustrations (Xinshuo Xiyouji (tuxiang), 1749/1888)

Jim R. McClanahan Leave a comment

I. Original Text

The Newly Annotated Journey to the West (Xinshuo Xiyouji, 新說西遊記, 1749) by Zhang Shushen (張書紳) is one of three popular editions of JTTW that circulated during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and overshadowed the original. [1] It contains a running commentary dispersed throughout the pilgrims’ many adventures. Anthony C. Yu (Wu & Yu, 2012) describes Zhang’s work as having a Confucian bias:

In his unabridged hundred-chapter Xinshuo Xiyouji (The Journey to the West, Newly Interpreted) of 1749, Zhang Shushen declared in the section entitled “Xiyouji zongpi 西游記總批 (Overall Comments on The Journey to the West)” that “the book Xiyou has been designated by the ancients as a book meant to illuminate the Dao [a pointed dig at the 1662 edition titled Xiyou zhengdao shu, with the Daoist-leaning preface attributed to Yu Ji … ], by which it originally means the Dao of the sages, the worthies, and the Confucians (儒 Ru). To consider it an illumination of the Dao of immortals and Buddhism would be a mistake, indeed.” From a point of view clearly unsympathetic to the popular movement of Three-Religions-Joining-As-One (sanjiao heyi 三教合一, a possibly millennium-old notion … ), Zhang defended the story of the quest for Buddhist scriptures as an allegory of the classic Confucian doctrines on the illustration of virtue (mingde 明德) and the rectification of the mind (zhengxin 正心), ignoring the repeated and complex elaborations of zhengxin in Chan Buddhism also for at least a thousand years prior to his time (vol. 1, pp. 51-52).

I’ve decided to archive a scanned copy of this work for posterity.

A digital version of the text (interspersed with other commentaries) can be found here.

Book link

Click to access Journey-to-the-West-Newly-Annotated-by-Zhang-Shushen-Xinshuo-Xiyouji-compressed.pdf

II. Text With Illustrations

I’ve previously archived illustrated versions of JTTW, including the original 1592 edition, (images from) Li Zhuowu’s late-16th-century critique, and a circa 1835 Japanese translation. Here, I’d like to add another, the Newly Annotated Journey to the West With Illustrations (Xinshuo Xiyouji tuxiang, 新說西遊記圖像, 1888). The original text and commentary are the same, but this edition features a preface by Wang Tao (王韜), as well as over 100 woodblock prints.

The prints in the archived book below are admittedly a little fuzzy. This webpage has somewhat clearer versions.

Book link

Click to access Journey-to-the-West-Newly-Annotated-With-Illustrations-1888-compressed.pdf

Prints of Zhu Bajie and Sun Wukong from the opening illustrations (larger version).

Note:

1) The Qing versions are noted for having shoehorned Tripitaka‘s life story (chapter nine) into the original 100 chapters of the 1592 edition.

Archive #5 – All Woodblock Prints from Mr. Li Zhuowu’s Literary Criticism of Journey to the West

Jim R. McClanahan Leave a comment

Here I present all of the woodblock prints from Mr. Li Zhuowu’s Literary Criticism of Journey to the West (Li Zhuowu Xiansheng piping Xiyouji, 李卓吾先生批評西遊記, late-16th-c. or early-17th-c.) by the Ming scholar Li Zhi (李贄, 1527-1602). It’s important to remember that the original novel was published in 1592, which means the images therein are some of the earliest depictions of the characters and episodes based on that freshly published version. The PDF linked below has nearly 200 prints, illustrating everything from Sun Wukong’s discovery of the Water Curtain Cave to the pilgrims’ final attainment of Buddhahood or Sainthood. Here is a sample.

Mr. Li's Criticism - Detail of Monkey fighting Heaven (small)

Sun Wukong fighting the heavenly army (larger version). Enhanced slightly for clarity.

PDF link

Click to access mr-li-zhuowus-literary-criticism-of-journey-to-the-west-late-16th-c-pictures-only.pdf

Thanks

The entirety of Mr. Li’s criticism is FAR too large to host on my meager site. The original files are hosted on Shuge.org and are free to download.