Writers › Writer / Poet
Shi Naian
Figure named in Ming sources as the author or first compiler of The Water Margin, whose life, home and very existence remain disputed
Mural of Water Margin, a work by this person.
Reeds surround the Liangshan stronghold as outlaws gather; on a nearby ridge, Wu Song faces a tiger. The marsh shelters a brotherhood shaped by injustice, courage and conflict.
Also known as Ming Er · Hao Naian
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Shi Naian is the name traditionally given as the author of The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan), but almost nothing reliable is known of his life, and some scholars doubt he existed. An early link between him and the novel is Gao Ru's Jiajing-era catalogue Baichuan shuzhi, which lists a hundred-chapter Loyal Water Margin as based on the text of Shi Naian of Qiantang and arranged by Luo Guanzhong. The novel follows Song Jiang's band of one hundred and eight outlaws at Liangshan Marsh at the end of the Northern Song. In the late Ming Jin Shengtan cut it to seventy chapters, credited it to Shi Naian and called the rest Luo Guanzhong's continuation. From the 1920s a genealogy and an epitaph attributed to Wang Daosheng surfaced around Baiju in Xinghua, Jiangsu, naming him Shi Zi'an; most scholars regard the epitaph as a later forgery.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; traditionally late Yuan to early Ming