Water Margin: of 309 figures here, 16 are named in the official history
The 120-chapter novel follows a band from its gathering at Liangshan through amnesty to destruction. The History of Song gives the whole affair a few lines: one sentence in the Annals of Huizong, plus a passage each in the biographies of Hou Meng and Zhang Shuye. This chapter puts the novel and those few lines on the same graph. The gap between them is the point.
419 figures in this chapter, 13 of whom appear in both history and fiction.
Song Jiang in the History of Song: three passages, a few hundred characters
The Annals of Huizong, under 1121, records: "The bandit Song Jiang of Huainan and others attacked Huaiyang Commandery; generals were sent to suppress them. They then struck Jingdong and Hebei and entered the borders of Chu and Hai prefectures. Zhang Shuye, prefect of Haizhou, was ordered to accept their surrender." The Biography of Zhang Shuye adds detail: Song Jiang's band raided ten commanderies and the government troops dared not face them; Zhang Shuye recruited a suicide squad, set an ambush, burned their boats, captured a lieutenant, and Song Jiang surrendered. The Biography of Hou Meng records Hou Meng's memorial proposing that Song Jiang be pardoned and sent against Fang La — "Song Jiang with thirty-six men ranged across Qi and Wei, and tens of thousands of government troops dared not oppose him; his ability must be extraordinary." Together that is a few hundred characters, and not one of the thirty-six is named. The novel's hundred and eight grew out of that blank.
309 figures, 16 with a dual record
This chapter holds 309 figures. Sixteen also appear in the History of Song: Song Jiang, Fang La, Zhang Shuye, Hou Meng and Lü Shinang, tied directly to the rising; the court figures Huizong, Cai Jing, Tong Guan, Gao Qiu, Cai You, Chen Guan and Wen Yanbo; the earlier emperors Shenzong, Yingzong and Zhezong; and the Liao ruler. The remaining 275 — Wu Song, Lin Chong, Lu Zhishen, Li Kui, Yan Qing — do not appear in the official record at all. On the graph they are all glowing diamonds with dashed lines; only those sixteen wear the gold ring. One look tells you that the world of Water Margin is built almost entirely inside the novel.
Gao Qiu, Cai Jing, Tong Guan: the history describes different men
In the novel the four great villains are the direct cause of the Liangshan revolt. In the History of Song each has his own biography and each is charged with something different. Tong Guan was a eunuch given military command who provoked border wars and was executed. Cai Jing served as chancellor four times and reworked the statutes; the History of Song places him in the Biographies of Treacherous Ministers. Gao Qiu, by contrast, is barely recorded — the History of Song gives him no biography of his own. He matters far more in the novel than in the record. This group is where this chapter's dual records are densest: open their nodes and the History of Song sits on the left, Water Margin on the right.
Amnesty and Fang La: the novel redirected the ending
In the Biography of Hou Meng, pardoning Song Jiang and sending him against Fang La is only Hou Meng's proposal; the history does not record that the plan was carried out. The Biography of Zhang Shuye has Song Jiang surrender after being defeated by an ambush. The novel makes the amnesty the hinge of the whole book, followed by campaigns against the Liao, against Tian Hu and Wang Qing, and against Fang La, in which most of the hundred and eight die. Fang La was real and his rising was real, but in the official record it runs parallel to Song Jiang's rather than being crushed by it.
From thirty-six men to a hundred and eight
The Biography of Hou Meng says "Song Jiang with thirty-six men." That number was fixed in the Southern Song by the Old Incidents of the Xuanhe Period and by Gong Kai's Eulogies for Song Jiang's Thirty-Six, and only in Water Margin does it expand to thirty-six Heavenly Stars and seventy-two Earthly Fiends, a hundred and eight in all, released by Marshal Hong opening a sealed hall by mistake. The number itself is an invention; its seed is that one phrase in the history.