First of all, let's give you a reassurance: no, obviously not!
The writing of the Water Margin is excellent, and it may even be the best writing among the four famous books. But recently, I have seen a lot of this argument on the Internet: what kind of Water Margin's costumes are written according to opera, and what Shi Nai'an doesn't understand armor at all. This is complete nonsense.
The costumes of the generals in the Water Margin are very obvious in the style of actual combat armor, but it is a little more fancy on top of this - this is not wrong, after all, Liang Shan's level is "big gold and silver".
Today, I'm going to talk to you about whether the armor in the Water Margin has any research value, and whether it is written according to the opera of the Ming Dynasty?
First of all, those who are familiar with the original work of the Water Margin should have the impression that almost every horse general's clothing description will appear words such as "battle robe", "battle jacket" and "levy robe".
The battle robe in the Water Margin refers to two kinds of clothing, one is the narrow-sleeved round-necked robe of the Song Dynasty, which is mostly worn by samurai, and Luda, Lin Chong, Kong Liang and other people wear this kind of clothing when they appear.
It looks like this (picture 2 shows the appearance of a round-necked robe without a placket).
And the other kind of "battle robe" refers to: The other is a kind of half-sleeved short coat, called "raccoon sleeve", similar to the "feather weaving" of a certain island country now. It can even be said that people's feather weaving is an alienated version of our raccoon sleeves (it is said that it was commissioned to learn from the Yuan army during the Eastern Crusade).
Most people interpret the "robe" in the original text as a shirt under the armor, which is actually wrong.
For example, in the passage of Dongping Mansion, it is written: "Song Jiang hurriedly dismounted, came to untie his rope, and took off his [armor brocade robe] and wore it with Dong Ping....In other words, this kind of robe is actually put on the outside of the armor.
Some people may think that this is a decoration, but in fact, armor is extremely easy to be exposed to high temperatures in the sun during combat or even marching, and it is easy to rust due to humid environment in rainy weather.
In the Ming Dynasty's "Wubei Zhi", it was written: "The sky is rainy and the ground is wet, and the iron armor is easy to rust and rot." A robe on an armor jacket can solve these problems very well, and in order to make it easier to put on and take off, this kind of robe is generally placket.
Due to the increase in the armor rate of the Song Dynasty, this kind of robe was promoted to the whole army at a very fast speed, and eventually this image was also absorbed by folk art, such as the image of the god in the Taoist painting of the Ming Dynasty.
Therefore, the statement that Shi Nai'an does not understand military affairs is self-defeating, and designing an image of a robe for each character just shows that Shi Nai'an understands the matters that need to be paid attention to when fighting.
The author is also very particular about helmets and other aspects of equipment. According to the stereotype, the most popular book should be the "phoenix wing helmet", that is, the helmet with wing-shaped decoration on both sides, but throughout the book, only Song Jiang, Qin Ming, Li Ying, Dong Ping, Li Kui, and Xuanzan are equipped with phoenix wing helmets, among which except for Song Jiang Li Ying and Li Kui, everyone else has one thing in common, that is, they are all officers above the regimental level, Qin Ming and Dong Ping are all soldiers and horses, which is equivalent to the current regimental level.
Xuanzan is the defense envoy Baoyi, close to the current major, that is, the division level. Other ones that were not too high-grade before going up the mountain did not have phoenix wing decorations, such as Lin Chong only wore a "treasure helmet" instead of a "treasure phoenix helmet", Yang Zhi wore a "frost and sun iron helmet", and Suo Chao "cooked copper lion helmet", which did not belong to the category of phoenix wing helmets.
From what I have listed, it can be seen that the author is right to write magnificently, but it must not be said that he writes equipment blindly regardless of the order of rank.
In addition, Liangshan is not like some readers said that all the golden helmets and golden armor, such a scene is only mentioned in the full text of Zhao'an and when he finally became a god.
Even if Liangshan is rich, its generals' equipment is also in order. For example, among the five tiger generals, Guan Sheng, Qin Ming and Hua Rong, the head of the eight hussars, are all golden armor.
After that, there is almost no description of gold armor, even Xu Ning's armor is only a "circle of gold armor" (circle of gold is to coil gold thread on the edge of the armor, not to mean that the entire armor is gold) Hua Rong's only one to wear gold armor in the future is probably Lu Fang, and Xuanzan is only "golden helmet and phoenix wings".
In this way, "the costumes of the Water Margin are written according to the opera, and Shi Nai'an doesn't understand armor at all. The argument is untenable.