Jump to content
Main menu
Main menu
move to sidebar
hide
Navigation
Main page
Recent changes
Random page
Help about MediaWiki
Special pages
Niidae Wiki
Search
Search
Appearance
Create account
Log in
Personal tools
Create account
Log in
Pages for logged out editors
learn more
Contributions
Talk
Editing
The Art of War
(section)
Page
Discussion
English
Read
Edit
View history
Tools
Tools
move to sidebar
hide
Actions
Read
Edit
View history
General
What links here
Related changes
Page information
Appearance
move to sidebar
hide
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
===Authorship=== [[File:Inscribed bamboo-slips of Art of War.jpg|thumb|300px|Fragments of ''The Art of War'' discovered as a part of the [[Yinqueshan Han Slips]], showing the version of ''The Art of War'' that was popular in [[Han dynasty]] (206 BC – 220 AD)]] Beginning around the 12th century, Sun Tzu's historical existence began to be questioned by Chinese scholars, primarily on the grounds that he is not mentioned in the historical classic ''[[Zuo Zhuan]]'', which mentions most of the notable figures from the [[Spring and Autumn period]].{{sfnp|Gawlikowski|Loewe|1993|p=447}} The name "Sun Wu" ({{lang|zh|孫武}}) does not appear in any text prior to the ''Records of the Grand Historian'',{{sfnp|Mair|2007|p=9}} and has been suspected to be a made-up descriptive cognomen meaning "the fugitive warrior", glossing the surname "Sun" as the related term "fugitive" ({{transliteration|zh|xùn}} {{lang|zh|遜}}), while "Wu" ({{transliteration|zh|wǔ}} {{lang|zh|武}}) is (1) the ancient Chinese virtue of "martial, valiant" and (2) a [[Jianghuai]] dialectal synonym of {{zhi|c=士|p=shì}} "[[Scholar-official#Origins of Shi (士) and Da fu (大夫)|knight]]",<ref>[[Liu An]] (original compiler), [[Xu Shen]] (annotator). ''[[Huainanzi|Huainan Honglie]] (Annotated)'', "Survey Obscurities". Main text: 「夫死生同域,不可脅陵,勇'''武'''一人,為三軍雄。」; Major et al.'s (2010) translation: "One for whom death and life are the same territory, who cannot be threatened, such a single brave '''warrior''' is the hero of the Three Armies."; [[Siku Quanshu]] version. vols. 4-7, [https://ctext.org/library.pl?if=en&file=67848&page=96#%E6%AD%A6%E5%A3%AB%E4%B9%9F%E6%B1%9F%E6%B7%AE%E9%96%93%E8%AC%82%E5%A3%AB%E7%99%BD%E6%AD%A6 p. 96 of 160] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230415095028/https://ctext.org/library.pl?if=en&file=67848&page=96#%E6%AD%A6%E5%A3%AB%E4%B9%9F%E6%B1%9F%E6%B7%AE%E9%96%93%E8%AC%82%E5%A3%AB%E7%99%BD%E6%AD%A6 |date=15 April 2023 }}; Annotation: 「'''武'''士也;江淮間謂士曰'''武'''。」</ref><ref>Liu An (2010) ''The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China''. Translated and edited by John S. Major, Sarah A. Queen, Aandrew Seth Meyer, and Harold D. Roth. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. p. 215</ref> which corresponds to Sunzi's role as the hero's [[doppelgänger]] in the story of [[Wu Zixu]].{{sfnp|Mair|2007|p=10}} In the early 20th century, the Chinese writer and reformer [[Liang Qichao]] theorized that the text was actually written in the 4th century BC by Sun Tzu's purported descendant [[Sun Bin]], as a number of historical sources mention a military treatise he wrote.{{sfnp|Gawlikowski|Loewe|1993|p=447}} Unlike Sun Wu, Sun Bin appears to have been an actual person who was a genuine authority on military matters, and may have been the inspiration for the creation of the historical figure "Sun Tzu" through a form of [[euhemerism]].{{sfnp|Mair|2007|p=10}} In 1972, the [[Yinqueshan Han slips]] were discovered in two [[Han dynasty]] (206 BC – 220 AD) tombs near the city of [[Linyi]] in [[Shandong]].{{sfnp|Gawlikowski|Loewe|1993|p=448}} Among the many [[Bamboo and wooden slips|bamboo slip]] writings contained in the tombs, which had been sealed between 134 and 118 BC, were two separate texts: one attributed to "Sun Tzu", corresponding to the received text, and another attributed to Sun Bin, which explains and expands upon the earlier ''The Art of War'' by Sunzi.{{sfnp|Gawlikowski|Loewe|1993|p=449}} The Sun Bin text's material overlaps with much of the "Sun Tzu" text, and the two may be "a single, continuously developing intellectual tradition united under the Sun name".<ref>[[Mark Edward Lewis]] (2005), quoted in Mair (2007), p. 18.</ref> This discovery showed that much of the historical confusion was due to the fact that there were two texts that could have been referred to as "Master Sun's Art of War", not one.{{sfnp|Gawlikowski|Loewe|1993|p=449}} The content of the earlier text is about one-third of the chapters of the modern ''The Art of War'', and their text matches very closely.{{sfnp|Gawlikowski|Loewe|1993|p=448}} It is now generally accepted that the earlier ''The Art of War'' was completed sometime between 500 and 430 BC.{{sfnp|Gawlikowski|Loewe|1993|p=449}}
Summary:
Please note that all contributions to Niidae Wiki may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see
Encyclopedia:Copyrights
for details).
Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)
Search
Search
Editing
The Art of War
(section)
Add topic