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 Ssu-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 Tzu in which he alludes to
contemporary affairs. The first in in VI. ss. 21: --

Though according to my estimate the soldiers of Yueh
exceed our own in number, that shall advantage them nothing
in the matter of victory. I say then that victory can be
achieved.

The other is in XI. ss. 30: --

Asked if an army can be made to imitate the SHUAI-JAN, I
should answer, Yes. For the men of Wu and the men of Yueh
are enemies; yet if they are crossing a river in the same
boat and are caught by a storm, they will come to each
other's assistance just as the left hand helps the right.