Sūnzǐ jízhù 孫子集注
The Sūn-zǐ — Collected Commentaries compiled by 吉天保 (Jí Tiānbǎo, 宋, 輯)
About the work
The standard premodern collected-commentaries edition of the Sūnzǐ bīngfǎ 孫子兵法, integrating the ten-commentary tradition (Shíjiā zhù 十家注) consolidated by Jí Tiānbǎo of the Sòng. The commentators absorbed are: Cáo Cāo 曹操 (HànWèi, 155–220), Mèngshì 孟氏 (Liáng), Lǐ Quán 李筌 (Mid-Táng), Dù Mù 杜牧 (803–852), Chén Hào 陳皞 (Late Táng), Jiǎ Lín 賈林 (Táng), Dù Yòu 杜佑 (735–812; via the Tōngdiǎn citations), Méi Yáochén 梅堯臣 (1002–1060), Wáng Xī 王晳 (Sòng), Héshì 何氏 / Zhāng Yù 張預 (Sòng). The work is in thirteen juan, matching the thirteen-篇 structure of the Sūnzǐ bīngfǎ itself. The placement of this commentary in the SKQS Rújiā 儒家 class — the Sūnzǐ being itself a bīngjiā 兵家 work — reflects the SBCK editorial decision and is anomalous within the standard SKQS classification (where the Sūnzǐ jízhù sits in the Zǐbù — Bīngjiā class). The Kanripo placement here is by KR3 catalog convention rather than by SKQS practice.
Abstract
The Sūnzǐ jízhù of Jí Tiānbǎo is the most influential of the several premodern collected-commentary integrations of the Sūnzǐ tradition, alongside the slightly earlier Wǔjīng qīshū zhìjiě 武經七書直解 of Liú Yín 劉寅 (Míng) and the closely-related Sòng Shíjiā zhù 十家注 found in early printings. The compilation method is the standard collected-commentary mode: each chapter of the Sūnzǐ is given in full, followed by all extant commentary on each phrase from the ten commentators, in chronological order CáoMèngLǐDùChénJiǎDùMéiWángZhāng. Where commentators disagree, all readings are preserved without editorial preference.
The compilation date is uncertain; Jí Tiānbǎo’s own lifedates are unrecorded. The conventional bracket — late Northern Sòng / early Southern Sòng — is set by the inclusion of the latest commentator Zhāng Yù, who was active under Huīzōng (r. 1100–1126), giving a terminus a quo of ca. 1100; the terminus ad quem is the early Southern Sòng before the work entered general circulation, conventionally before the Lóngxīng era (1163). The frontmatter brackets the work to ca. 1100–1200.
The preface to the work (preserved in the SBCK base, KR3a0015_000.txt) opens by citing Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修’s Sìkù shūmù (the Sòng Sìkù compilation, not to be confused with the SKQS) to the effect that there were over twenty Sūnzǐ commentaries, of which the ten preserved here were the most consequential. Cáo Cāo’s commentary is presented as the most operationally serious, drawing on Cáo’s own Xīn shū 新書 of military precepts (now lost but partly recoverable via the LǐWèigōng wènduì 李衛公問對 dialog).
The work has not been transmitted into the SKQS proper but is preserved in the SBCK Sòng-edition reproduction. The principal modern critical edition is Yáng Bǐngān 楊丙安’s Shíyī jiā zhù Sūnzǐ jiào lǐ 十一家注孫子校理 (Zhōnghuá Shūjú 1999), which adds an eleventh commentator (Dù Yòu, separately).
The bibliographic record: not in the Suí, Táng or Sòng zhì (the work being post-cataloging); in Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí; in Wénxiàn tōngkǎo; SBCK retention.
Translations and research
- The Sūn-zǐ itself is the most translated military classic in the world; for the jí-zhù tradition specifically:
- Yáng Bǐng-ān 楊丙安, Shí-yī jiā zhù Sūn-zǐ jiào lǐ 十一家注孫子校理, Běijīng: Zhōnghuá Shūjú (Xīn biān zhūzǐ jíchéng), 1999. The standard modern critical edition.
- Roger T. Ames, Sun-tzu: The Art of Warfare. The First English Translation Incorporating the Recently Discovered Yin-ch’üeh-shan Texts, New York: Ballantine, 1993 — uses Yín-què-shān 銀雀山 finds against Jí Tiānbǎo.
- Ralph D. Sawyer, The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China, Boulder: Westview, 1993 — translates Sūn-zǐ with Cáo Cāo’s commentary as the operational baseline.
- Lionel Giles, Sun Tzu on the Art of War, London, 1910 — earliest serious English translation, drawing on the Shí-jiā zhù.
- Yìn-què-shān 銀雀山 bamboo strips (1972) — recovered Western Hàn Sūn-zǐ manuscripts that have transformed the modern critical understanding; key results in Yín-què-shān Hàn-jiǎn shìwén 銀雀山漢簡釋文 (Wénwù Chūbǎnshè, 1985) and the Sūn-zǐ shìjiā volume of the same series.
Other points of interest
The Yínquèshān 銀雀山 bamboo-strip find of 1972 (Western Hàn, ca. 130 BCE, including five chapters of Sūnzǐ and the long-lost Sūn Bìn bīngfǎ 孫臏兵法) has retrospectively confirmed the substantial textual stability of the Sūnzǐ bīngfǎ across the two thousand years between its composition and the Sòng Shíjiā zhù; the Jí Tiānbǎo integrated text largely matches the Yínquèshān witness in chapters where the latter is preserved.
Cáo Cāo’s commentary — by far the earliest of the ten — is the most influential layer; its operational character (advice to a commander rather than an exegesis of a classic) is one of the cleanest examples of pre-Sòng Chinese military prose surviving in any quantity.