The Text of Sun Tzu - Page 2

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.
it is in 6 PEN, forming part of a well-printed set of 23 early
philosophical works in 83 PEN. [38] It opens with a preface by
Sun Hsing-yen (largely quoted in this introduction), vindicating
the traditional view of Sun Tzu's life and