Abstract
This article maps out a sphere of ritual practice that recognizably serves as a framework for the famous Ming dynasty (1368–1644) vernacular narrative Water Margin (水滸傳 Shuihu zhuan). By establishing a set of primary referents that are ritual in nature, I question the habit of applying the modern category of “literary fiction” in a universalizing, secular way, marginalizing or metaphorizing Daoist elements. I argue that literary analysis can only be fruitful if it is done within the parameters of ritual. Although I tie the story’s ritual framework to specific Daoist procedures for imprisoning demonic spirits throughout the article, my initial focus is on a genre of revelatory writing known as “celestial script” (天書 tianshu). This type of script is given much attention at important moments in the story and it is simultaneously known from Daoist ritual texts. I show a firm link between Water Margin and the uses of “celestial script” by presenting a nineteenth century Daoist ordination manual that contains “celestial script” for each of Water Margin’s 108 heroic protagonists.
Highlights
This article maps out a sphere of ritual practice that recognizably serves as a framework for the famous Ming dynasty (1368–1644) vernacular narrative Water Margin (水滸傳 Shuihu zhuan)
“literary fiction.”1 Our understanding of a story-cycle like Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳, variously translated in its most popular Ming version as Water Margin or Outlaws of the Marsh,2 has long been successfully forced into the Eurocentric straitjacket that wants to interpret it as a “novel,” that subjects it to “literary analysis,” and that tends to read as “metaphor” any content that is too overtly shaped in the likeness of demons, immortals or other phenomena appearing fanciful to the secular mind
By establishing a sphere of ritual practice—and really of ritual logic more broadly—that recognizably serves as framework for Water Margin, I question the habit of applying the modern category of “literary fiction” in a universalizing, secular way
Summary
By establishing a sphere of ritual practice—and really of ritual logic more broadly—that recognizably serves as framework for Water Margin, I question the habit of applying the modern category of “literary fiction” in a universalizing, secular way. According to Asad, it was made conceptually possible due to the modern “essentialization of the ‘sacred’ as an external, transcendent power”17 —a phenomenon far removed from our profane world with its individual constructions of truth It may be for these reasons above all, that Water Margin’s modern interpreters show little interest in the production of efficacy through Daoist ritual that the story presents so prominently. Daoist ritual and its efficacy (some would prefer to speak of “magic,” or “sorcery”) does not naturally correspond to a transcendent notion of the sacred, nor does it self- relate to the requirement of authenticity, realism or other notions of what constitutes the “genuine.” By that logic, a story like Water Margin can only be appreciated by diminishing such topics as secondary to the framework of the story, as symbolic of something else (a “deeper meaning”) that is covert and by imposing on it some form of “interpretation” that is made primary.
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