Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu, known in Chinese as Sunzi, means “Master Sun.” He is remembered as a Chinese military general, strategist, philosopher, and writer associated with the Eastern Zhou period, an era that stretched from 771 to 256 BC. Traditional historians, including the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian, placed him in the service of King Helü of Wu and dated his life to 544–496 BC. His birth name was said to be Sun Wu, and he is also posthumously known by the courtesy name Changqing.

Yet even the basic facts of Sun Tzu’s life are uncertain. The earliest account is a short biography in Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian, written around 97 BC. It says Sun Tzu was born in Qi, now in modern Shandong, near the end of the Spring and Autumn period. Later scholars noticed problems in the record. The earlier Zuo Zhuan, which gives a fuller account of the Battle of Boju, does not mention him, even though Sima Qian said Sun Tzu’s theories had been proved there.

The best-known story about him comes from that early biography. After hearing of Sun Wu’s The Art of War, King Helü summoned him and asked him to show his skill by training 180 palace concubines as soldiers. Sun Tzu divided them into two companies and appointed the king’s two favorite concubines as commanders. When they laughed at his orders, he had the commanders executed despite the king’s objections. The rest obeyed, and the king appointed Sun Wu as a general. He was then said to have led Wu to victory over the larger state of Chu at the Battle of Boju in 506 BC.

Sun Tzu is traditionally credited as the author of The Art of War, a Classical Chinese text on military strategy from the Warring States period. Modern doubts surround that attribution. The earliest parts of the work probably date to at least a century after the Sun Tzu of tradition, and the text contains terms, technology, ideas, events, and military techniques that do not fit comfortably with his supposed lifetime. In 1972, bamboo slips found at Yinque Shan in Shandong added important evidence. The slips, sealed between 134 and 118 BC, preserved about one-third of the chapters of the modern The Art of War, with texts that match very closely.

The same discovery also recovered Sun Bin’s Military Methods, a lost work attributed in Han dynasty bibliographies to a descendant of Sun Wu. Because both Sun Wu and Sun Bin could be called “Sun Tzu” in classical Chinese texts, some historians had once treated them as the same person. The rediscovery showed why stories and writings under the name “Master Sun” became tangled. Whether read as the work of one man or as part of a developing military tradition, the sayings linked to Sun Tzu remain spare and practical. “If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are” captures the cool judgment that keeps his words alive on the page.