Page:Sun Tzu on The art of war.djvu/38

, they are scarcely intelligible and stand no less in need of a commentary than the text itself. As we have seen, Ts‘ao Kung is the reputed author of the, a book on war in 100,000 odd words, now lost, but mentioned in the.

2. Mêng Shih. The commentary which has come down to us under this name is comparatively meagre, and nothing about the author is known. Even his personal name has not been recorded. Chi T‘ien-pao’s edition places him after Chia Lin, and Ch‘ao Kung-wu also assigns him to the T‘ang dynasty, but this is obviously a mistake, as his work is mentioned in the. In Sun Hsing-yen’s preface, he appears as Mêng Shih of the Liang dynasty [502–557]. Others would identify him with Mêng K‘ang of the 3rd century. In the, he is named last of the “Five Commentators,” the others being Wei Wu Ti, Tu Mu, Ch‘ên Hao and Chia Lin.

3. Li Ch‘üan of the 8th century was a well-known writer on military tactics. His has been in constant use down to the present day. The mentions  (lives of famous generals from the Chou to the T‘ang dynasty) as written by him. He is also generally supposed to be the real author of the popular Taoist tract, the. According to Ch‘ao Kung-wu and the T‘ien-i-ko catalogue, he followed the text of Sun Tzŭ, which differs considerably from those