that seems to me quite untenable. If one thing is more apparent
than another after reading the maxims of Sun Tzu, it is that
their essence has been distilled from a large store of personal
observation and experience. They reflect the mind not only of a
born strategist, gifted with a rare faculty of generalization,
but also of a practical soldier closely acquainted with the
military conditions of his time. To say nothing of the fact that
these sayings have been accepted and endorsed by all the greatest
captains of Chinese history, they offer a combination of
freshness and sincerity, acuteness and common sense, which quite
excludes the idea that they were artificially concocted in the
study. If we admit, then, that the 13 chapters were the genuine
production of a military man living towards the end of the "CH`UN
CH`IU" period, are we not bound, in spite of the silence of the
TSO CHUAN, to accept Ssu-ma Ch`ien's account in its entirety? In
view of his high repute as a sober historian, must we not
hesitate to assume that the records he drew upon for Sun Wu's
biography were false and untrustworthy? The answer, I fear, must
be in the negative. There is still one grave, if not fatal,
objection to the chronology involved in the story as told in the
SHIH CHI, which, so far as I am aware, nobody has yet pointed
out. There are two passages in Sun Tzu in which he alludes to
contemporary affairs. The first in in VI. ss. 21: --
Though according to my estimate the soldiers of Yueh
exceed our own in number, that shall advantage them nothing
in the matter of victory. I say then that victory can be
achieved.
The other is in XI. ss. 30: --
Asked if an army can be made to imitate the SHUAI-JAN, I
should answer, Yes. For the men of Wu and the men of Yueh
are enemies; yet if they are crossing a river in the same
boat and are caught by a storm, they will come to each
other's assistance just as the left hand helps the right.
These two paragraphs are extremely valuable as evidence of
the date of composition. They assign the work to the period of
the struggle between Wu and Yueh. So much has been observed by
Pi I-hsun. But what has hitherto escaped notice is that they
also seriously impair the credibility of Ssu-ma Ch`ien's
narrative. As we have seen above, the first positive date given
in connection with Sun Wu is 512 B.C. He is then spoken of as a
general, acting as confidential adviser to Ho Lu, so that his
alleged introduction to that monarch had already taken place, and
of course the 13 chapters must have been written earlier still.
But at that time, and for several years after, down to the
capture of Ying in 506, Ch`u and not Yueh, was the great
hereditary enemy of Wu. The two states, Ch`u and Wu, had been
constantly at war for over half a century, [31] whereas the first
war between Wu and Yueh was waged only in 510, [32] and even then
was no more than a short interlude sandwiched in the midst of the
fierce struggle with Ch`u. Now Ch`u is not mentioned in the 13
chapters at all. The natural inference is that they were written
at a time when Yueh had become the prime antagonist of Wu, that
is, after Ch`u had suffered the great humiliation of 506. At
this point, a table of dates may be found useful.
B.C. |
|
514 | Accession of Ho Lu.
512 | Ho Lu attacks Ch`u, but is dissuaded from entering Ying,
| the capital. SHI CHI mentions Sun Wu as general.
511 | Another attack on Ch`u.
510 | Wu makes a successful attack on Yueh. This is the first
| war between the two states.
509 |
or | Ch`u invades Wu, but is signally defeated at Yu-chang.
508 |
506 | Ho Lu attacks Ch`u with the aid of T`ang and Ts`ai.
| Decisive battle of Po-chu, and capture of Ying. Last
| mention of Sun Wu in SHIH CHI.
505 | Yueh makes a raid on Wu in the absence of its army. Wu
| is beaten by Ch`in and evacuates Ying.
504 | Ho Lu sends Fu Ch`ai to attack Ch`u.
497 | Kou Chien becomes King of Yueh.
496 | Wu attacks Yueh, but is defeated by Kou Chien at Tsui-li.
| Ho Lu is killed.
494 | Fu Ch`ai defeats Kou Chien in the great battle of Fu-
| chaio, and enters the capital of Yueh.
485 |
or | Kou Chien renders homage to Wu. Death of Wu Tzu-hsu.
484 |
482 | Kou Chien invades Wu in the absence of Fu Ch`ai.
478 |
to | Further attacks by Yueh on Wu.
476 |
475 | Kou Chien lays siege to the capital of Wu.
473 | Final defeat and extinction of Wu.
The sentence quoted above from VI. ss. 21 hardly strikes me
as one that could have been written in the full flush of victory.
It seems rather to imply that, for the moment at least, the tide
had turned against Wu, and that she was getting the worst of the
struggle. Hence we may conclude that our treatise was not in
existence in 505, before which date Yueh does not appear to have
scored any notable success against Wu. Ho Lu died in 496, so
that if the book was written for him, it must have been during
the period 505-496, when there was a lull in the hostilities, Wu
having presumably exhausted by its supreme effort against Ch`u.
On the other hand, if we choose to disregard the tradition
connecting Sun Wu's name with Ho Lu, it might equally well have
seen the light between 496 and 494, or possibly in the period
482-473, when Yueh was once again becoming a very serious menace.
[33] We may feel fairly certain that the author, whoever he may
have been, was not a man of any great eminence in his own day.
On this point the negative testimony of the TSO CHUAN far
outweighs any shred of authority still attaching to the SHIH CHI,
if once its other facts are discredited. Sun Hsing-yen, however,
makes a feeble attempt to explain the omission of his name from
the great commentary. It was Wu Tzu-hsu, he says, who got all
the credit of Sun Wu's exploits, because the latter (being an
alien) was not rewarded with an office in the State.
How then did the Sun Tzu legend originate? It may be that
the growing celebrity of the book imparted by degrees a kind of
factitious renown to its author. It was felt to be only right
and proper that one so well versed in the science of war should
have solid achievements to his credit as well. Now the capture
of Ying was undoubtedly the greatest feat of arms in Ho Lu's
reign; it made a deep and lasting impression on all the
surrounding states, and raised Wu to the short-lived zenith of
her power. Hence, what more natural, as time went on, than that
the acknowledged master of strategy, Sun Wu, should be popularly
identified with that campaign, at first perhaps only in the sense
that his brain conceived and planned it; afterwards, that it was
actually carried out by him in conjunction with Wu Yuan, [34] Po
P`ei and Fu Kai?
It is obvious that any attempt to reconstruct even the
outline of Sun Tzu's life must be based almost wholly on
conjecture. With this necessary proviso, I should say that he
probably entered the service of Wu about the time of Ho Lu's
accession, and gathered experience, though only in the capacity
of a subordinate officer, during the intense military activity
which marked the first half of the prince's reign. [35] If he
rose to be a general at all, he certainly was never on an equal
footing with the three above mentioned. He was doubtless present
at the investment and occupation of Ying, and witnessed Wu's
sudden collapse in the following year. Yueh's attack at this
critical juncture, when her rival was embarrassed on every side,
seems to have convinced him that this upstart kingdom was the
great enemy against whom every effort would henceforth have to be
directed. Sun Wu was thus a well-seasoned warrior when he sat
down to write his famous book, which according to my reckoning
must have appeared towards the end, rather than the beginning of
Ho Lu's reign. The story of the women may possibly have grown
out of some real incident occurring about the same time. As we
hear no more of Sun Wu after this from any source, he is hardly
likely to have survived his patron or to have taken part in the
death-struggle with Yueh, which began with the disaster at Tsui-
li.
If these inferences are approximately correct, there is a
certain irony in the fate which decreed that China's most
illustrious man of peace should be contemporary with her greatest
writer on war.
The Text of Sun Tzu
-------------------
I have found it difficult to glean much about the history of
Sun Tzu's text. The quotations that occur in early authors go to
show that the "13 chapters" of which Ssu-ma Ch`ien speaks were
essentially the same as those now extant. We have his word for
it that they were widely circulated in his day, and can only
regret that he refrained from discussing them on that account.
Sun Hsing-yen says in his preface: --
During the Ch`in and Han dynasties Sun Tzu's ART OF WAR
was in general use amongst military commanders, but they seem
to have treated it as a work of mysterious import, and were
unwilling to expound it for the benefit of posterity. Thus
it came about that Wei Wu was the first to write a commentary
on it.
As we have already seen, there is no reasonable ground to
suppose that Ts`ao Kung tampered with the text. But the text
itself is often so obscure, and the number of editions which
appeared from that time onward so great, especially during the
T`ang and Sung dynasties, that it would be surprising if numerous
corruptions had not managed to creep in. Towards the middle of
the Sung period, by which time all the chief commentaries on Sun
Tzu were in existence, a certain Chi T`ien-pao published a work
in 15 CHUAN entitled "Sun Tzu with the collected commentaries of
ten writers." There was another text, with variant readings put
forward by Chu Fu of Ta-hsing, which also had supporters among
the scholars of that period; but in the Ming editions, Sun Hsing-
yen tells us, these readings were for some reason or other no
longer put into circulation. Thus, until the end of the 18th
century, the text in sole possession of the field was one derived
from Chi T`ien-pao's edition, although no actual copy of that
important work was known to have survived. That, therefore, is
the text of Sun Tzu which appears in the War section of the great
Imperial encyclopedia printed in 1726, the KU CHIN T`U SHU CHI
CH`ENG. Another copy at my disposal of what is practically the
same text, with slight variations, is that contained in the
"Eleven philosophers of the Chou and Ch`in dynasties" [1758].
And the Chinese printed in Capt. Calthrop's first edition is
evidently a similar version which has filtered through Japanese
channels. So things remained until Sun Hsing-yen [1752-1818], a
distinguished antiquarian and classical scholar, who claimed to
be an actual descendant of Sun Wu, [36] accidentally discovered a
copy of Chi T`ien-pao's long-lost work, when on a visit to the
library of the Hua-yin temple. [37] Appended to it was the I
SHUO of Cheng Yu-Hsien, mentioned in the T`UNG CHIH, and also
believed to have perished. This is what Sun Hsing-yen designates
as the "original edition (or text)" -- a rather misleading name,
for it cannot by any means claim to set before us the text of Sun
Tzu in its pristine purity. Chi T`ien-pao was a careless
compiler, and appears to have been content to reproduce the
somewhat debased version current in his day, without troubling to
collate it with the earliest editions then available.
Fortunately, two versions of Sun Tzu, even older than the newly
discovered work, were still extant, one buried in the T`UNG TIEN,
Tu Yu's great treatise on the Constitution, the other similarly
enshrined in the T`AI P`ING YU LAN encyclopedia. In both the
complete text is to be found, though split up into fragments,
intermixed with other matter, and scattered piecemeal over a
number of different sections. Considering that the YU LAN takes
us back to the year 983, and the T`UNG TIEN about 200 years
further still, to the middle of the T`ang dynasty, the value of
these early transcripts of Sun Tzu can hardly be overestimated.
Yet the idea of utilizing them does not seem to have occurred to
anyone until Sun Hsing-yen, acting under Government instructions,
undertook a thorough recension of the text. This is his own
account: --
Because of the numerous mistakes in the text of Sun Tzu
which his editors had handed down, the Government ordered
that the ancient edition [of Chi T`ien-pao] should be used,
and that the text should be revised and corrected throughout.
It happened that Wu Nien-hu, the Governor Pi Kua, and Hsi, a
graduate of the second degree, had all devoted themselves to
this study, probably surpassing me therein. Accordingly, I
have had the whole work cut on blocks as a textbook for
military men.
The three individuals here referred to had evidently been
occupied on the text of Sun Tzu prior to Sun Hsing-yen's
commission, but we are left in doubt as to the work they really
accomplished. At any rate, the new edition, when ultimately
produced, appeared in the names of Sun Hsing-yen and only one co-
editor Wu Jen-shi. They took the "original edition" as their
basis, and by careful comparison with older versions, as well as
the extant commentaries and other sources of information such as
the I SHUO, succeeded in restoring a very large number of
doubtful passages, and turned out, on the whole, what must be
accepted as the closes approximation we are ever likely to get to
Sun Tzu's original work. This is what will hereafter be
denominated the "standard text."
The copy which I have used belongs to a reissue dated 1877.
