Hrm these two things don't seem very contradictory to me.
1. As you know, Dugu had different Sword stages. We only know about the Heavy Iron Sword. From the descriptions, the HIS is the only one that purposely uses inner power and simple moves to dominate the opponent. The other three stages are not talked about in detail, so any one of them could be Dugu 9 Jian. In wuxia, I believe this is enough of an explanation to place them in the same universe. He is known as the ultimate swordsmen after all; it is not strange at all for him to try to reach perfection from the extreme spectrum of all inner power in the HIS, and extreme technique in something like Dugu 9 Jian.
2. I don't know too much about the differences in the Yijinjing, where do the contradictions seem to lie? Are the many centuries between DGSD and SPW enough to explain the changes made to it? I do remember someone stating that in DOMD, YJJ has become almost a normal Shaolin art and a few of the elder monks mastered it and of course weren't very powerful. That would be directly contradictory to SPW as well....but I attribute that to the centuries passing and the art being a bit watered down.
To me, Sharp Sword, Heavy Iron Sword, Wooden Sword, and No Sword sound like a progression. Dook Goo 9 Swords doesn't fit comfortably anywhere into this progression.
...therein lies another problem with SPW: if you remove SPW from the canon, the Deterioration Theory of Martial Arts from DGSD through B&S: G&R actually works. DGSD's overall martial arts level was greater than that of the CONDOR HEROES TRILOGY. The CONDOR HEROES' TRILOGY's overall martial arts level was greater than that of SSwRB and the Qing Dynasty era stories. It's only when you stick SPW into the timeline that the Deterioration Theory goes haywire.2. I don't know too much about the differences in the Yijinjing, where do the contradictions seem to lie? Are the many centuries between DGSD and SPW enough to explain the changes made to it? I do remember someone stating that in DOMD, YJJ has become almost a normal Shaolin art and a few of the elder monks mastered it and of course weren't very powerful. That would be directly contradictory to SPW as well....but I attribute that to the centuries passing and the art being a bit watered down.
Dugu 9 Jian would be progression. He moves past supreme technique to focus on supreme inner strength. Supreme technique would be quite indicative of Dugu 9 Jian in the early spectrum, or it can be a culmination of his learnings on the late end of the spectrum through wooden or no sword. Dugu 9 Jian doesn't contradict anything.
I think there are no problems with SPW. But there are problems with Ode to Gallantry. Shi Po Tian can beat any great from LOCH & ROCH and fighters of Xiao Feng's level from DGSD. He also has a potential to give Dugu Qiubai his wishes, a great fight or even a defeat . His fighting with the two lords and his "leap over the ocean" feat are crazy and should belong to Tang dynasty timeline.
Deterioration theory applies because martial arts either get lost entirely over time (e.g. 6MSJ) or become incomplete (e.g. Sunflower Manual). But when martial arts that were lost get brought to light again, it's not unreasonable that characters from later novels can reach or even exceed those of previous novels. In the case of SPW, both DG9J and Sunflower are martial arts created from the Song dynasty, and the Ode to Gallantry martial arts was created a very long time ago as well. All of these martial arts would have been stronger and more complete had they been used by their original practitioners.
I look at deterioration theory as an average of all the martial artists in a particular novel as a whole. Outliers like Shi Potian are obviously an exception to the rule. If you actually average out the martial artists in each novel (or just compare the second and third tier characters) I think there's no contradiction to the deterioration theory at all.
The one exception to the rule is that obviously LOCH characters are overall weaker than ROCH, but the novels take place so close together that they should be considered as part of one larger novel as far as martial arts are concerned.
I think deterioration theory really only applies to Qing-era martial artists because it exists so recently in history; it's a necessity unless JY wants to create an alternate-world type timeline where people were still flying around in documented history.
The other dynasties are old enough where history wasn't as well kept, and our minds can imagine these fantastic feats that weren't documented.
Overall HSDS wulin seemed to be superior to the wulin of the LOCH/ROCH era 100 years prior if you factor out the "greats" outliers. It's not necessarily inferior to the DGSD wulin if you factor out Xiao Feng+ level fighters. If you include the unnamed dozens of Xuan generation monks, there are also unnamed dozens of "Kong" generation monks; during the Shaolin Lion Slaying Assembly, the Kong monk who conspired with Cheng Kun was said to be not inferior to the named "Kong" monks; who knows how many dozens of them actually exist?
So I pretty much agree that the Qing era martial artists are obviously weakest, and the strongest of the DGSD era are obviously the strongest, but it doesn't really imply that the eras in between have to follow a declining pattern, especially if we are dismissing "great" outliers. The LOCH/ROCH wulin seemed exceptionally weak, and prior to that, according to people who doubt Dugu Qiubai, that era was also extremely weak (via the Ren Woxing being a strong opponent argument). HSDS was strong, Ode to Gallantry was somewhat weak, but SPW seemed strong again. There does not seem to be a pattern.
Agree with devils91 and tape except for this :
If Duan Yanqing, Ding Chin Ciu, Murong Fu, Elder Kurong, Yellow Eyebrow Monk, Duan Zhengmin, You Tanzhi, Su Xinghe, and may be some others live in HSDS era, they will dominate wulin except for ZSF and ZWJ. Not to add 40+++ fighters in juxian manor who are better than 4th evil. Average wulin standard in DGSD is very high
In HSDS we have the 3 Du monks, the two Xuan Ming Elders, Yang Dingtian, Kong Jian, and Cheng Kun as the people that should be above the "guardian lord" level. Aside from You Tanzhi, I think the people above can definitely match up with the people you have listed.
Then we have a TON of characters like the 4 Guardian Lords, Yang Xiao, Fan Yao, Wudang 5 Heroes, Miejue, the various sect leaders, Ah Da, Ah Er, Ah San, the few powerful Beggar's Clan Elders, the two Demons that attacked a Du monk and was gaining an advantage (meaning better than Yin Tianzheng + Yang Xiao), and a few others I've left out that are comparable to the above but a notch below. The wulin of HSDS was definitely very, very strong, if only because it was explored more fully. Compare it to LOCH/ROCH where the Quanzhen elders pretty much dominated jianghu outside of the Greats.
The DGSD wulin is probably stronger still, but I don't think it is THAT much stronger. But the LOCH/ROCH wulin is definitely much weaker, and it is "supposed" to be stronger as it is over a century earlier.
Last edited by tape; 01-13-14 at 02:03 AM.
It is worth noting though that DGSD and HSDS covered a much larger scale of the wulin than LOCH/ROCH did so there were probably quite a few notable characters that never appeared. But it does seem that, factoring out Great level characters, HSDS was a stronger era than LOCH/ROCH, a major contributing factor being the absence of Shaolin in LOCH/ROCH and the emergence of Wudang and Ming Cult in HSDS.
I do think that is a major factor, since Guo Jing had more of a personal adventure than one that involved wulin. It might be the fault of the story, but given the evidence we have, HSDS is indeed stronger.
The Quanzhen sect seemed to completely dominate the LOCH/ROCH era, but they are probably not stronger than the HSDS Shaolin/Wudang, and of course nowhere near Ming.
Most of the sects that existed in HSDS, especially Ming, were around in the LOCH/ROCH era, but they were not mentioned.
I've always found the deterioration theory pretty spotty. Sure, you can say that the Qing dynasty characters tend to be weaker, and that's true based on the depiction of feats we have of them. But can you honestly say that the level of martial arts significantly deteriorated in the more than hundred years between LOCH and HSDS? Keep in mind that if we're factoring historical and cultural reasons, there should be a significant deterioration here because the Mongol invasion killed off a significant portion of the Chinese population during the events of the trilogy.
Also, are the characters of DGSD so superior or is the scope of the story that much wider? There are three protagonists in DGSD, each with fairly large scopes, so of course it will seem like there are more high level figures in the novel. The truth is even in DGSD, a great level opponent would have very few figures that can fight on their level. XF pretty much never explicitly lost a fight in his story, and it's doubtful he's more than a half level better than the Great level fighters.
Ming Dynasty works like SPW and OTG also contain martial arts figures that are at an extremely high level, even though they take place several centuries after the trilogy. Even if you exclude SPT, who's quite possibly the strongest protagonist in the entire JY canon, you still have Long and Mu who are likely at least Great level fighters. SPW also has very strong figures like LHC, RWX, FQY, and of course DFBB who is likely above all of them, and according to many Chinese fans, likely even stronger than the Greats or XF.
The Qing Dynasty stories are a different story, and indeed could be viewed from an entirely separate canonology. But I'm unconvinced of a significant amount of deterioration from DGSD through SPW/XKX. It almost seems like people use the deterioration theory circularly as justification for the deterioration theory.
Your inference sounds logical, although I do believe, in the afterword, Jin Yong mentions that The Smiling Proud Wanderer can be read as a political allegory disguised as a wuxia novel. And as an allegory, it can happen in any dynasty or organization. Which is the reason why I believe Jin Yong did not explicitly mention in the novel which dynasty/period the story relates to.