"The_Art_of_War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tzu Sun)

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 -------------------
Chapter V. 10

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