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.
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."
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!"
Hoa-yin is about 14 miles from T’ung-kuan on the eastern border of
Shensi. The temple in question is still visited by those about the ascent of
the Western Sacred Mountain. It is mentioned in a text as being "situated five
li east of the district city of Hua-yin. The temple contains the
Hua-shan tablet inscribed by the T’ang Emperor Hsuan Tsung [713-755]."
See my "Catalogue of Chinese Books" (Luzac & Co., 1908), no. 40.
This is a discussion of 29 difficult passages in Sun Tzŭ.
Cf. Catalogue of the library of Fan family at Ningpo: "His commentary is
frequently obscure; it furnishes a clue, but does not fully develop the
meaning."