Art of War (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (28 page)

Like so many texts in a literature as vast and ancient as China’s, the reference to the
Tso chuan
comes with a step-ladder provenance and mysteries of its own. The
Tso chuan
—the
Tso Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals
—existed by the early Han Dynasty. When precisely is open to question, but its import is unquestionable.

Chinese intellectual activity, from poetry to military tracts, builds upon references to a long intellectual past, especially to what are known as the
Five Classics
. Consequently, idioms and points of reference can transmit encyclopedic layers of meaning in astonishingly brief lines. Along with the
Kung-yung
and the
Ku-liang
commentaries, the
Tso chuan
sets out to explain the background and significance of the events related in the fifth of the great Five Classics, the
Ch’un-Ch’iu
, or the
Spring and Autumn Annals
. Employing extremely laconic language, it chronicles events in the state of Lu from 722 to 481 B.C. The
Annals
were essential study for China’s educated classes across the millennia. Asian scholar William Theodore de Bary notes that they were regarded “not only as the final authority upon questions of ancient history . . . but as the embodiment of moral law . . . and the source of all wisdom and right knowledge.” Therefore, any reference to the Classics or to the commentaries on them is the same as citing the final authority on a subject. DG

10. If you march thirty
li
with the same object, two-thirds of your army will arrive.

 

In the
T’ung Tien
[Tu Yu’s encyclopedic treatise on the Constitution] is added: “From this we may know the difficulty of manœuvring.”

11. We may take it then that an army without its baggage-train is lost; without provisions it is lost; without bases of supply it is lost.

 

This is explained by Tu Yu as “fodder and the like”; by Tu Mu and Chang Yü as “goods in general”; and by Wang Hsi as “fuel, salt, foodstuffs, etc.” But I think what Sun Tzu meant was “stores and accumulated in dépôts,” as distinguished from . . . the various impedimenta accompanying an army on its march.

12. We cannot enter into alliances until we are acquainted with the designs of our neighbours.

13. We are not fit to lead an army on the march unless we are familiar with the face of the country—its mountains and forests, its pitfalls and precipices, its marshes and swamps.

14. We shall be unable to turn natural advantages to account unless we make use of local guides.

15. In war, practise dissimulation, and you will succeed. Move only if there is a real advantage to be gained.

16. Whether to concentrate or to divide your troops, must be decided by circumstances.

17. Let your rapidity be that of the wind,

 

The simile is doubly appropriate, because the wind is not only swift but, as Mei Yao-ch’ên points out, “invisible and leaves no tracks.”

your compactness that of the forest.

 

Mêng Shih [notes]: “When slowly marching, order and ranks must be preserved”—so as to guard against surprise attacks. But natural forests do not grow in rows, whereas they do generally possess the quality of density or compactness.

18. In raiding and plundering be like fire, in immovability like a mountain.

 

That is [with reference to the latter], when holding a position from which the enemy is trying to dislodge you, or perhaps, as Tu Yu says, when he is trying to entice you into a trap.

19. Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

 

Tu Yu quotes a saying of T’ai Kung which has passed into a proverb: “You cannot shut your ears to the thunder or your eyes to the lightning—so rapid are they.” Likewise, an attack should be made so quickly that it cannot be parried.

20. When you plunder a countryside, let the spoil be divided amongst your men;

 

Sun Tzu wishes to lessen the abuses of indiscriminate plundering by insisting that all booty shall be thrown into a common stock, which may afterwards be fairly divided amongst all.

when you capture new territory, cut it up into allotments for the benefit of the soldiery.

 

Ch’ên Hao also says: “Quarter your soldiers on the land, and let them sow and plant it.” It is by acting on this principle, and harvesting the lands they invaded, that the Chinese have succeeded in carrying out some of their most memorable and triumphant expeditions, such as that of Pan Ch’ao, who penetrated to the Caspian Sea.

21. Ponder and deliberate

 

Note that both these words [in English and in Chinese] are really metaphors derived from the use of scales.