Page:Sun Tzu on The art of war.djvu/33



As we have already seen, there is no reasonable ground to suppose that Ts‘ao Kung tampered with the text. But the text itself is often so obscure, and the number of editions which appeared from that time onward so great, especially during the T‘ang and Sung dynasties, that it would be surprising if numerous corruptions had not managed to creep in. Towards the middle of the Sung period, by which time all the chief commentaries on Sun Tzŭ were in existence, a certain Chi T‘ien-pao published a work in 15 chüan entitled  “Sun Tzŭ with the collected commentaries of ten writers.” There was another text, with variant readings put forward by Chu Fu of  Ta-hsing, which also had supporters among the scholars of that period; but in the Ming editions, Sun Hsing-yen tells us, these readings were for some reason or other no longer put into circulation. Thus, until the end of the 18th century, the text in sole possession of the field was one derived from Chi T‘ien-pao’s edition, although no actual copy of that important work was known to have surrived [sic]. That, therefore, is the text of Sun Tzŭ which appears in the War section of the great Imperial encyclopaedia printed in 1726, the Ku Chin T‘u Shu Chi Ch‘êng. Another copy at my disposal of what is practically the same text, with slight variations, is that contained in the “Eleven philosophers of the Chou and Ch‘in dynasties”