Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu (/suːn ˈdzuː, suːn ˈsuː/;traditional Chinese: 孫子; simplified Chinese: 孙子; pinyin: Sūnzǐ) was a Chinese military general, strategist, philosopher, and writer who lived during the Eastern Zhou period (771–256 BC). Sun Tzu is traditionally credited as the author of The Art of War, a Classical Chinese text on military strategy from the Warring States period, though the earliest parts of the work probably date to at least a century after him.

Sun Tzu is revered in Chinese and East Asian culture as a legendary historical and military figure; however, his historical existence is uncertain. The Han dynasty historian Sima Qian and other traditional Chinese historians placed him as a minister to King Helü of Wu and dated his lifetime to 544–496 BC. The name Sun Tzu—by which he is more popularly known—is an honorific which means "Master Sun". His birth name was said to be Sun Wu (traditional Chinese: 孫武; simplified Chinese: 孙武) and he is posthumously known by his courtesy name Changqing (Chinese: 長卿). Traditional accounts state that the general's descendant Sun Bin wrote a treatise on military tactics, also titled The Art of War. Since both Sun Wu and Sun Bin were referred to as "Sun Tzu" in classical Chinese texts, some historians thought them identical, prior to the rediscovery of Sun Bin's treatise in 1972.

The earliest account of Sun Tzu's life is a short biography written around 97 BC by Sima Qian as part of his Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian). Sima Qian states that Sun Tzu was born in Qi near the end of the Spring and Autumn period (776–471 BC), and that his courtesy name was "Wu." The rest of the biography consists of an account of how King Helü of Wu, having heard of Sun Wu's Art of War, summoned him to the palace and asked him to demonstrate his ability to train soldiers by training the king's harem of 180 concubines into soldiers.

Sun Tzu was said to have divided them into two companies, appointing the two concubines most favored by the king as the company commanders, and proceeded to give them orders, which they ignored, instead breaking out into laughter. Over the king's protestations, Sun Tzu then had the two concubines executed, at which the rest of the "soldiers" began to behave at once, and the king appointed Sun Wu as a general. He went on to lead the state of Wu to victory against the much larger state of Chu during the Battle of Boju in 506 BC. Later accounts also associate Sun Tzu with Wu Zixu, who was credited with the authorship of the Wuzi, another ancient Chinese military text. Zixu was said to have been a refugee from Chu, and he introduced Sun Wu to King Helu.

Beginning in the 12th century (during the Song dynasty), several Chinese scholars began to doubt the historical existence of Sun Tzu. During the Song dynasty, Ye Shi (1150–1223) noticed that the Zuo Zhuan, which mentions most of the notable figures from the Spring and Autumn period, does not mention Sun Tzu at all despite the fact that Sima Qian had claimed in the Records of the Grand Historian that Sun Tzu had proved on the battlefield that his theories were effective at the Battle of Boju. The Zuo Zhuan, which was written centuries earlier than the Records of the Grand Historian and provides a much more detailed account of the Battle of Boju, does not mention Sun Tzu at all.

The name "Sun Wu" (孫武) does not appear in any text prior to the Records of the Grand Historian, and may have been an invented descriptive cognomen meaning "the fugitive warrior" – the surname "Sun" can be glossed as the related term "fugitive" (xùn 遜), while "Wu" is the ancient Chinese virtue of "martial, valiant" (wǔ 武), or a Jianghuai dialectal synonym of 士; shì "knight", which corresponds to Sunzi's role as the hero's doppelgänger in the story of Wu Zixu.

Furthermore, the earliest parts of The Art of War, the work traditionally credited to Sun Tzu, probably dates to at least a century after him. Anachronisms in The Art of War include terms, technology (such as anachronistic crossbows), philosophical ideas, events, and military techniques that should not have been available to Sun Wu. Additionally, there are no records of professional generals during the Spring and Autumn period; these are only extant from the Warring States period, so there is doubt as to Sun Tzu's rank and generalship. This caused much confusion as to when The Art of War was actually written; since the 12th century, most scholars from the Song and Qing Dynasty along with modern Chinese, Japanese and Western scholars follow Ye Shi in assigning the text to the beginning of the Warring States period. This later dating has been bolstered by the discovery of the text on bamboo slips accidentally unearthed by construction workers at Yinque Shan in Shandong in 1972, which had been sealed between 134 and 118 BC. The content of the earlier text is about one-third of the chapters of the modern The Art of War, and their texts matches very closely.

Another text discovered in the same collection was Sun Bin's Military Methods, a previously lost work that had been attributed to one of Sun Wu's descendants by Han dynasty bibliographies. Due to its close relationship with the Art of War, Military Methods provides important context on the body of military thought in Chinese late antiquity. In the early 20th century, the Chinese writer and reformer Liang Qichao had theorized that the text of the Art of War was actually written in the 4th century BC by this purported descendant of Sun Tzu. Although this hypothesis is no longer tenable, 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". 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. This discovery also demonstrated that much of the historical confusion about anecdotes attributed to Sun Tzu could have been due to the fact that there were two authors that could have been referred to as "Master Sun."