The Art of War

[dirtybird]

When i was in the bookstore i happened to see different versions of Sun Tsu's Art Of War. The one i read was in my school's library. It was an excellent read, it touched the topics from Managing A Campaign to Maintaining Troop Morale. I really enjoyed the book overall. The sad part is, i didn't purchase the book. It's okay though, i could always order it online.

[Sun Fin]

I've seen this quote ‘Attack is the secret of defence’ being attributed to Sun Tzu but I've gone through my copy of the Art of War several times and I can't see it (or something that is slightly different). Does anyone know who said it/where it is in the Art of War?

[kim_il_fun]

hihi....i am posting here so as to not make a separate thread for the same topic...

Does anybody know anything about translations of Sun Tzu?

Are there any translations which are to be avoided, like those which may have been published for the purposes of disinformation or psyops?

Here is the translation I am presently reading, although in the past I have read a different translation.

[DaoLunOfShiji]

Lionel Giles has a pretty great translation of the Art of War.

[Sun Fin]

The one I use is written by Prof Ralph D Sawyer. It is part of The Seven Military Classics Of Ancient China. Sawyer is considered one of English languages leading scholars on Chinese military history and he has written various books on the topic. Including one on Zhuge Liang, although I haven't read it, the reviews on amazon aren't especially positive.

The best recommendation for him, as far as I'm concerned though, is that he has had an essay included in Military Culture in Imperial China. That book also features articles by such eminent scholars as Rafe De Crispgny and Michael Loewe who I know are leaders in this field.

One word of warning, he writes names in the Wade-Giles system which can lead to confusion.

[Tao Qian]

Hi,

Someone knows where to find the Cao Cao prologue to "The art of wae" in English or Chinese?

Thanks,

[DaoLunOfShiji]

Here is Cao Cao's commentary, untranslated.
http://www.guoxue123.com/zhibu/0201/0000/017.htm

[Sun Fin]

Since you've asked I've spent some time looking on google and amazon trying to find a translation of it and I've not been able to find anything in English.

[Tao Qian]

Really? I'm completely surprised, specially after finding it translated into Spanish

[Tao Qian]

Is this translation of Cao Cao's prologue make any sense? At the beginning it was based on the Spanish one, but I've noticed that in Spanish the translator left a whole sentence out of the text.

操聞上古有弧矢之利，《論語》曰：「足食，足兵。」《尚書》：「八政曰師。」《易》曰：「師貞，丈人吉。」《詩》曰：「王赫斯怒，爰征其旅。」黃帝、湯、武咸用干戚以濟世也。《司馬法》曰：「人故殺人，殺之可也。」恃武者滅，恃文者亡。夫差、偃王是也。聖人之用兵，戢而時動，不得已而用之。吾觀兵書戰策多矣，孫武所著深矣。孫子者，齊人也，名武；為吳王闔閭作兵法一十三篇；試之婦人，卒以為將；西破強楚，入郢，北威齊、晉。後百餘歲有孫臏，是武之後也。審計重舉，明畫深圖，不可相誣，而但世人未之深亮訓說，況文煩富行於世者，失其旨要，故撰為《略解》焉。


Weapons are an invention from ancient times. As The Analects reads: "sufficient food, sufficient weapons" and The Book of Documents assigns to the last and eighth main officer the duty of military. According to the Yijing: "the army lead by solid and virtous men summons the best omens" (7th hexagram). The book of Odes mentions the king that full of rage stiffen its troops.
But if the Yellow Emperor, the [King] Tang [of Shang] and the [King] Wu [of Zhou] had to go to war, it was beacuse they wanted to help the humankind. As the Methods of the Sima says: "If you kill, you can be killed, too". And, actually, anyone that only trusts war, will be anhilated. However, the same fate awaits to the passive ruler. Kings Fuchai [from Wu, son of Helu] and Yan [from Xu] are examples of both extremes. That's why at war the sage ruler constrains himself and only acts when the time is ripe; when he uses weapons is because is teh last resort.
I think that, from all the military books, the one from Sun Zi is the best. Sun Zi wrote a book of 13 chapters for the king of Wu; test it with the help of his concubines and then defeated the powerful Chu, conquering its capital Ying, and defied the authority in the North of Qi and Jin. And 100 years later its relative Sun Bin was also a great strategist.
The deep knowledge on the book considering evaluation, action, planification and estratagem cannot admit any critic. Many, however, did not understand well the clarity of the main teachings of the book. They study the less important parts and forget the real essence. That's why I've written these comments [to clarify the real essence].