before, sought aid from Ch’i, citing the benefits of mutual defense.
Again Sun Pin advised waiting for the forces to decimate each other, further weakening Wei. Han mounted a total defensive effort but lost five major battles in succession and was forced to submit to Ch’in in a desperate effort to survive. Ch’i then sallied forth, following the previous strategy, with Sun Pin as strategist and T’ien Chi in command. P’ang Chüan immediately abandoned his campaign in Han, turning back toward his home state. Meanwhile, King Hui mobilized all his resources, placing his son in command of the home-defense troops, with the sole aim of seeking a decisive confrontation with Ch’i.
Under Sun Pin’s direction the Ch’i armies, which were advancing into Wei, followed the dictum “Be deceptive.” P’ang Chüan arrogantly believed the men of Ch’i to be cowards who would flee rather than engage mighty Wei in battle. Therefore, Sun Pin daily reduced the number of cooking fires in the encampment to create a facade of ever- increasing desertion. He also effected a tactical withdrawal to further entice P’ang Chüan into the favorable terrain at Ma-ling where the Ch’i commander concealed ten thousand crossbowmen among the hills. P’ang Chüan, apparently afraid that he would miss an opportunity to inflict a severe blow on the retreating Ch’i army, abandoned his heavy forces and supply train and rushed forth with only light units. Arriving at night, the combined Wei forces were am-bushed as soon as they penetrated the killing zone. In addition to being decisively defeated by Ch’i’s withering crossbow fire, 100,000 Wei soldiers needlessly perished because of their commander’s character flaws and hasty judgment.102
Thereafter, Wei not only never regained its former power but also suffered numerous incursions by the now-unchecked mighty Ch’in, which would eventually subjugate all China. In 340 B.C. Wei was forced to cede 700 li to Ch’in after sustained defeats, and felt compelled to move its capital to Ta-liang to avoid the incessant danger. Although a strong figure occasionally emerged to effect a temporary resurgence in Wei’s strength, its territory continued to shrink until the state, together with the royal house, was finally extinguished in 225 B.C.
In order to appreciate the great value and inherent importance of the Chinese military classics, one should note several brief historical and political points. First, military works were not normally permitted in private hands, and their possession could be construed as evidence of a conspiracy. (Possession of the T’ai Kung’s Six Secret Teachings—a book advocating and instructing revolution—would be particularly fatal.) Second, almost all these teachings were at first transmitted through the generations, often orally and always secretly. Eventually they were recorded—committed to written form on bamboo slips—and sometimes became public knowledge. Government scribes and designated officials gathered the slips for state use, depositing them in imperial libraries, where they were so highly valued that they were exempted from the infamous book burnings of the Ch’in dynasty. Once stored away, they were accessible to a few professors of the classics, a restricted number of high officials, and the emperor himself. Even these privileged individuals might still be denied access to the critical writings, especially if they were related to the imperial family.
Even after the teachings were recorded in manuscript form on bamboo, silk, or eventually paper (after the Han dynasty), patriots sometimes felt compelled to remove them from public domain. General Chang Liang, who played a fundamental role in the overthrow of the tyrannical Ch’in dynasty and in the establishment of the Han, for example, supposedly had the sole copy of the Three Strategies of Huang Shih-kung, from which he had personally profited, buried with him in his casket. According to one tradition, however, the text resurfaced when his tomb was vandalized in the fourth century A.D. Another example is the well-known (although perhaps apocryphal) refusal of Li Wei-kung, a famous strategist and effective general, to provide the T’ang emperor with more than defensive knowledge and tactics. In the view of Li Wei- kung, strategies for aggressive action should not be disseminated because, with the empire already at peace, they could only aid and interest those who wanted to precipitate war and incite revolution.
The seven military books, as they have been traditionally arranged in the Seven Military Classics since the Sung dynasty, are:
Sun-tzu’s Art of War Wu-tzu
The Methods of the Ssu-ma (Ssu-ma Fa)
Questions and Replies Between T’ang T’ai-tsung and Li Wei-kung Wei Liao-tzu
Three Strategies of Huang Shih-kung T’ai Kung’s Six Secret Teachings.
Although uncertainty abounds regarding the authorship and dates of several of the classics, as well as to what extent they are composite books drawing upon common ground and lost writings, the traditional order unquestionably is not chronological. Sun-tzu’s Art of War has generally been considered the oldest and greatest extant Chinese military work, even though the purported author of the Six Secret Teachings—the T’ai Kung—was active hundreds of years earlier than the (possibly) historical Sun-tzu. Materials preserved in the Ssu-ma Fa reputedly extend back into the early Chou; the Wu-tzu may have been recorded by Wu Ch’i’s disciples, although suffering from later accretions; and the Three Strategies probably follows the Wei Liao-tzu, yet traditionalists still associate it with the T’ai Kung. Accordingly, one possible order (with many caveats and unstated qualifications) might well be:
INITIAL PERIOD Ssu-ma Fa Art of War SECOND PERIOD Wu-tzu
THIRD PERIOD Wei Liao-tzu
Six Secret Teachings Three Strategies
T’ANG-SUNG Questions and Replies
Much of the evidence for ascribing dates of composition to particular periods is tenuous and often circular, and the systematic study of the evolution of strategic thought and military concepts remains to be undertaken. However, the preceding sequence—although possibly infuriating Sun-tzu advocates—seems sustainable in the light of both
traditional textual scholarship and recent tomb discoveries. The relative order of books in the third period (which probably coincides with the latter half of the third century B.C.) remains to be defined.103 A summary discussion of the various viewpoints on the Art of War and their purported justifications, as well as a consideration of whether Sun- tzu even existed and what historical role he might have played, will be found at the end of the introduction to the translation.