← Sun Tzŭ on the Art of War: The Oldest Military Treatise in the World

Corrigenda

[Transcriber’s note: the corrigenda listed below has been incorporated into the text.]

  • P. ix, note: For “edition” read “translation.”
  • „ 14, line 3: For “by” read “in the.”
  • „ 16, line 5: For “T.” read “T‘u Shu.”
  • „ „ § 19, note: Before “War” insert “Soldiers are not to be used as playthings.”
  • „ 17, § 1: 全軍, etc. The more I think about it, the more I prefer the rendering suggested on p. 159, § 22, note.
  • „ „ § 1 note, and p. 78, line 6: Insert “the” before “Ssŭ-ma Fa.”
  • „ 33, note on heading: Cf. X. § 12, where 勢 is translated “strength,” though it might also be “conditions.” The three words 執, 埶 and 勢 have been much confused. It appears from the Shuo Wên that the last character is post-classical, so that Sun Tzŭ must have used either 執 or 埶 in all senses.
  • „ 45, line 1: For “sublety” read “subtlety.”
  • „ 63, line 4: M. Chavannes writes in the T‘oung Pao, 1906, p. 210: “Le général Pan Tch‘ao n’a jamais porté les armes chinoises jusque sur les bords de la mer Caspienne.” I hasten to correct my statement on this authority.
  • „ 80, 9th line from the bottom: For 囗 read 口.
  • „ 109, § 23, note, and p. 126, 5th line from bottom: For “Huang Shih-kung” read “Huang-shih Kung.”
  • „ 124, line 7: For “Ch‘ên” read “Ch‘ên Hao.”
  • „ 136, 11th line from bottom: Insert “to” before “select.”
  • „ 152, § 2: Substitute semi-colon for full stop after “available.”

Additional Transcriber’s Notes

Text notes:

  1. The text contains Chinese characters. Character variants matching the printed text are used whenever possible rather than more common versions. Only Unicode normalized form C versions were used (see below). For best results, insure that the eReader has the latest Chinese font packages.
  2. For the HTML version, page numbers of the original printed text are displayed within braces to the side of the text.
  3. Footnotes have been renumbered and placed at the end of the book.
  4. The annotation text has been indented for easier reading. The original printed text did not indent this text.
  5. In the Introduction pages xi and xii, sentence groups in the quotation from Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien’s biography of Sun Tzŭ separated by em-dashes are now separated into paragraphs for clarity.
  6. In the original book, several Chinese text lines were placed in the top quarter of a page and the translation in the bottom three quarters of the page. This transcription places each Chinese text line above its corresponding translation.
  7. Missing quotation marks, capitalization, punctuation, and spaces were silently corrected.
  8. Except as mentioned above and in the Change List that follows, every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including non-standard punctuation, inconsistently hyphenated words, etc. The corrigenda has already been incorporated into the text.
  9. New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

Change List (page numbers from original printed book):

  • Page x befel changed to befell
  • Page xx then changed to them
  • Page xxv abready changed to already
  • Page xxxi surrived changed to survived
  • Page xlviii footnote #1 have changed to I have
  • Page xlviii combine two instances of footnote #4
  • Page 17 according to Ssŭ-ma Fa, changed to according to the Ssŭ-ma Fa,
  • Page 29 and 62 Using variant 獲 (U+7372) in place of 𫉬 (U+2B26C) since the latter code point is not handled by some TTS systems.
  • Page 39 meaniug changed to meaning
  • Page 44 succeding changed to succeeding
  • Page 70 exclained changed to exclaimed
  • Page 125 σωθεῖτε changed to σωθείητε
  • Page 136 Chang Yü adopts its, changed to Chang Yü adopts it,
  • Page 152 the material for changed to The material for
  • Page 154 and 156 Using variant 荒 (U+798F) in place of 𮎰 (U+2E3B0, ⿱艹㠩) since the latter code point is rare in fonts.
  • Page 168 accompained changed to accompanied
  • Page 171 leaders of mercenary troops.”. changed to leaders of mercenary troops.”
  • Several pages Using variant 隙 (U+9699) in place of 𨻶 (U+28EF6) since the latter code point is not handled by some TTS systems.

Character changes to Unicode normalized form C versions:

  • 節 (U+FA56) → 節 (U+7BC0)
  • 神 (U+FA19) → 神 (U+795E)
  • 既 (U+FA42) → 既 (U+65E2)
  • 祥 (U+FA1A) → 祥 (U+7965)
  • 福 (U+FA1B) → 福 (U+798F)
  • 館 (U+FA2C) → 館 (U+9928)
  • 祖 (U+FA50) → 祖 (U+7956)