27. In the 3rd century B.C.
28. Ssu-ma Jang-chu, whose family name was T’ien, lived in the latter half of the 6th century B.C., and is also believed to have written a work on war. See Shih Chi, ch. 64, and infra at the beginning of the INTRODUCTION.
29. See Legge’s Classics, vol. V, Prolegomena p. 27. Legge thinks that the Tso Chuan must have been written in the 5th century, but not before 424 B.C.
30. See Mencius III. 1. iii. 13-20.
31. When Wu first appears in the Ch’un Ch’iu in 584, it is already at variance with its powerful neighbour. The Ch’un Ch’iu first mentions Yüeh in 537, the Tso Chuan in 601.
32. This is explicitly stated in the Tso Chuan, XXXII, 2.
33. There is this to be said for the later period, that the feud would tend to grow more bitter after each encounter, and thus more fully justify the language used in XI. § 30.
34. With Wu Yuan himself the case is just the reverse:—a spurious treatise on war has been fathered on him simply because he was a great general. Here we have an obvious inducement to forgery. Sun Wu, on the other hand, cannot have been widely known to fame in the 5th century.
35. From Tso Chuan: "From the date of King Chao’s accession [515] there was no year in which Ch’u was not attacked by Wu."
36. Preface ad fin: "My family comes from Lo-an, and we are really descended from Sun Tzŭ. I am ashamed to say that I only read my ancestor’s work from a literary point of view, without comprehending the military technique. So long have we been enjoying the blessings of peace!"