known to have survived. That, therefore, is the text of Sun Tzǔ which appears in the War section of the great Imperial encyclopedia printed in 1726, the 古今圖書集成 Ku Chin Tʽu Shu Chi Chʽêng . Another copy at my disposal of what is practically the same text, with slight variations, is that contained in the 周秦十一子 Eleven philosophers of the Chou and Chʽin dynasties (1758). And the Chinese printed in Capt. Calthrop’s first edition is evidently a similar version which has filtered through Japanese channels. So things remained until 孫星衍 Sun Hsing-yen (1752⁠–⁠1818), a distinguished antiquarian and classical scholar, who claimed to be an actual descendant of Sun Wu , accidentally discovered a copy of Chi Tʽien-pao’s long-lost work, when on a visit to the library of the 華陰 Hua-yin temple. Appended to it was the 遺說 I Shuo of 鄭友賢 Chêng Yu-hsien , mentioned in the Tʽung Chih , and also believed to have perished. This is what Sun Hsing-yen designates as the 古本 or 原本 “original edition (or text)”⁠—a rather misleading name, for it cannot by any means claim to set before us the text of Sun Tzǔ in its pristine purity. Chi Tʽien-pao was a careless compiler, and appears to have been content to reproduce the somewhat debased version current in his day, without troubling to collate it with the earliest editions then available. Fortunately, two versions of Sun Tzǔ , even older than the newly discovered work, were still extant, one buried in the Tʽung Tien , Tu Yu’s great treatise on the Constitution, the other similarly enshrined in the Tʽai Pʽing Yü Lan encyclopedia. In both the complete text is to be found, though split up into fragments, intermixed with other matter, and scattered piecemeal over a number of different sections. Considering that the Yü Lan takes us back to the year 983, and the Tʽung Tien about 200 years further still, to the middle of the Tʽang dynasty, the value of these early transcripts of Sun Tzǔ can hardly be overestimated. Yet the idea of utilizing them does not seem to have occurred to anyone until Sun Hsing-yen , acting under Government instructions, undertook a thorough recension of the text. This is his own account:⁠—