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A military treatise summing up the military experiences prior to and during the mid-Warring States period (475 BC – 221 BC).
Two editions of translations were released, and this publication includes everything:
- The 15 chapters of part 1 released in 1985
- The additional chapter released in 1985
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The 15 chapters from 1975’s Part II, which were excised for that 1985 edition.
If this is what I think it is, then I first read this as The Second Art of War and found it a much better read than its predecessor. I was never able to find a book with that title.
- aka Sun Bin: The Art of War
- This is a two-book hardcover which also has the original/earlier The Art of War – (~476 BC book), by Sunzi
- Published 2000-01-01
- ISBN-10 7119024124
- ISBN-13 978-7119024127
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Note: I’ve read the author died in 310 BC, and I haven’t seen a more accurate date for this book.
- p.21 – Sunzi and Sun Bin lived more than 160 years apart.
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Sun Bin (孫臏 · 孙膑)
- Historians came to call him “Qi Sunzi” (Master Sun of Qi).
Note: This post will only have notes from the Sun Bin section of this book. See The Art of War – (~476 BC book), by Sunzi for other notes.
- “Regrettably, the bamboo strips on which two of the chapters were inscribed have been so badly damaged as to be illegible. Hence they have not been translated.” — p.25
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“To help the flow of the language in Sun Bin: The Art of War, it has often been necessary to fill in the gaps caused by damage to the bamboo strips.” — p.25
- These have been clearly labeled in the text.
- There are also significant gaps that are impossible to fill in, which are also clearly labeled in the text.
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Sun Bin is the descendant of Sunzi by several generations. (p.21)
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- p.21 – Introduction
In April 1972, in the course of excavating the No.1 Han Tomb at Yinqueshan (Silver Sparrow Mountain) in Linyi County, Shandong Province, archaeologists unearthed two sets of bamboo strips dating back to the early Western Han Dynasty, one with a hand-copied version of The Art of War by Sunzi of Wu and another by Sunzi of Qi. The simultaneous discovery of these two Art of Wars from the same tomb is proof that the two Sunzis did exist – Sun Wu and Sun Bin, and each had written his own book. The fog that had hung over the issue for so long was finally dispersed. — p.22
The 1975 edition of Sun Bin: The Art of War had two parts, each containing 15 chapters. Ten years later, in 1985, the same publishing house put out a new edition with only 16 chapters in all included in Bamboo Strips from Han Tomb at Yinqueshan I. All of the 15 chapters in Part II were deleted, but an additional chapter titled Wu Jaio Fa (Five Ways to Train Troops) was added. The reason for the changes is that in all the 15 chapters in Part I, there are written the words “Sunzi said” or “Kin Wei said” (translator’s note: King Wei was the ruler of Qi who constantly consulted Sun Bin on military affairs), quite convincingly identifying the work as that of Sun Bin. No such phrases appear in the 15 chapters formerly included in Part II, thereby making it difficult to determine their authorship. — p.22
As to exactly how many chapters the original text contained and what the contents were, at present there is no way of knowing. — p.23
The 16 chapters of Sun Bin: The Art of War// are based on the 1985 edition published by the Cultural Relics Press, while the 15 chapters in appendices are based on the 1975 edition published by the same press. These texts have been translated into modern [simplified] Chinese. — p.25
This section was written August 1999, by Wu Rusong and Wu Xianlin.
