The remaining six weapons of the eighteen are not named. Not until a Yuan
version ofThe Water Margindoes a full list of eighteen martial arts appear:
“Spear,鍾(?), bow, crossbow, gun, whip, metal tablet,^11 long sword, chain,
truncheon, fu-axe, yue-axe, ge-halberd, ji-halberd, shield, staff and spear,
and toothless rake.
The literary origin of this delineation of the eighteen weapons is clear
from the omission of the most basic close combat weapon, the sword, from
the list, as well as the inclusion of weapons like the whip or the toothless
rake. While many of these weapons presumably did appear on stage, most
never made it to the battlefield or into the hands of most martial artists.
Also, note the shift of the bow and the crossbow from their earlier posi-
tions at the head of the list, to third and fourth, respectively, and the entry
offirearms into the formal description of martial arts skills. The resulting
list is an inventive compilation of performative requirements and some
actual changes in warfare, rather than being purefiction or pure reality. As
a whole, the mastery of the eighteen martial arts demonstrates that the
warrior in question is a completefighter.
Of course, the eighteen martial arts do not include unarmed combat or
the ubiquitous sword. Unarmed combat skills are known under a variety of
terms for boxing and wrestling and were likely assumed for someone
mastering so many weapon skills. Unarmed combat was of less value in a
realfight than armed combat, since most melees outside of stage perform-
ances would have been between armedfighters. A martial artist had the
realistic expectation that he or she would need to be armed and know
how to use weapons in a genuinefight. Weapons were also useful in the
theatrical and storytelling realms as markers of individual warriors.
A broad panoply of weapons allowed performers to distinguish between
otherwise similarly described or made-up characters.
The absence of the sword in favor of the long sword is more problematic.
It is possible that the long sword was understood to mean fencing in general
and thus included the sword. Alternatively, the long sword was seen as the
weapon of the highly skilled martial artist rather than the ordinary sword
used by soldiers. While long swords were more widely used among the
Mongols than the Chinese, the setting and Chinese identity of most of
the martial arts heroes in Chinesefiction argue against the imposition of a
chronologic bias on the material. Moreover, the stories began to form under
the Song, were possiblyfirst made into theatrical productions in the Yuan,
but reached their most mature versions during the Ming. Some versions of
The Water Marginonly emerged in the Qing Dynasty. Ultimately then, the
formulation of a specific eighteen martial arts was neither a direct reflection
Weapons 147