It is noticeable that both Yeh Shui-hsin and Ch‘ên Chên-sun, while
rejecting the personality of Sun Wu as he figures in Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien’s
history, are inclined to accept the date traditionally assigned to
the work which passes under his name. The author of the _Hsü Lu_ fails
to appreciate this distinction, and consequently his bitter attack
on Ch‘ên Chên-sun really misses its mark. He makes one or two points,
however, which certainly tell in favour of the high antiquity of
our “13 chapters.” “Sun Tzŭ,” he says, “must have lived in the age
of Ching Wang [519–476], because he is frequently plagiarised in
subsequent works of the Chou, Ch‘in and Han dynasties.”[69] The two
most shameless offenders in this respect are Wu Ch‘i and Huai-nan Tzŭ,
both of them important historical personages in their day. The former
lived only a century after the alleged date of Sun Tzŭ, and his death
is known to have taken place in 381 B.C. It was to him, according to
Liu Hsiang, that 曾申 Tsêng Shên delivered the _Tso Chuan_, which had
been entrusted to him by its author.[70] Now the fact that quotations
from the _Art of War_, acknowledged or otherwise, are to be found
in so many authors of different epochs, establishes a very strong
probability that there was some common source anterior to them all,—in
other words, that Sun Tzŭ’s treatise was already in existence towards
the end of the 5th century B.C. Further proof of Sun Tzŭ’s antiquity
is furnished by the archaic or wholly obsolete meanings attaching to
a number of the words he uses. A list of these, which might perhaps
be extended, is given in the _Hsü Lu_; and though some of the
interpretations are doubtful, the main argument is hardly affected
thereby.[71] Again, it must not be forgotten that Yeh Shui-hsin, a
scholar and critic of the first rank, deliberately pronounces the
style of the 13 chapters to belong to the early part of the fifth
century. Seeing that he is actually engaged in an attempt to disprove
the existence of Sun Wu himself, we may be sure that he would not
have hesitated to assign the work to a later date had he not honestly
believed the contrary. And it is precisely on such a point that
the judgment of an educated Chinaman will carry most weight. Other
internal evidence is not far to seek. Thus, in XIII. § 1, there is an
unmistakable allusion to the ancient system of land-tenure which had
already passed away by the time of Mencius, who was anxious to see it
revived in a modified form.[72] The only warfare Sun Tzŭ knows is that
carried on between the various feudal princes (諸侯), in which armoured
chariots play a large part. Their use seems to have entirely died out
before the end of the Chou dynasty. He speaks as a man of Wu, a state
which ceased to exist as early as 473 B.C. On this I shall touch
presently.
But once refer the work to the 5th century or earlier, and the
chances of its being other than a _bonâ fide_ production are sensibly
diminished. The great age of forgeries did not come until long after.
That it should have been forged in the period immediately following
473 is particularly unlikely, for no one, as a rule, hastens to
identify himself with a lost cause. As for Yeh Shui-hsin’s theory,
that the author was a literary recluse,[73] that seems to me quite
untenable. If one thing is more apparent than another after reading
the maxims of Sun Tzŭ, 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 generalisation, 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
Ssŭ-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 Tzŭ in which he alludes
to contemporary affairs. The first is in VI. § 21:—
Though according to my estimate the soldiers of Yüeh exceed our
own in number, that shall advantage them nothing in the matter of
victory. I say then that victory can be achieved.