Sun Wu's fame is very large, and he is known as "Bing Sheng", "Bing Family Most Holy", "Ancestor of Bing Family", "Master of Hundred Generations of Bing Family" and "Originator of Oriental Bingxue", which can be described as prestigious and famous, such as thunder.
But whether Sun Wu exists as a person is actually very suspicious.
The suspicious thing is that all the pre-Qin literature, including the Zuo Zhuan and the Chinese, have no record of Sun Wu's words and phrases.
That is to say, Sun Wu, this person, has no deeds except for leaving the thirteen articles of the Art of War "Sun Tzu" passed down.
In other words, if it weren't for the fact that there are thirteen articles of the Art of War "Sun Tzu", Sun Wu as a person is actually not worth mentioning.
I don't know where Sima Qian, a Han Dynasty man, when compiling the "History of Sun Tzu Wu Qilie", came from and told a story of Sun Wu's "Wu Gong Xunmei" in a colorful way.
The story is not complicated.
It is said that Sun Wu wrote the thirteen articles of the Art of War "Sun Tzu" and rushed to find King Wu to seek employment. King Wu's performance was very strange, he did something that many ordinary people like to think, but no one in history had ever done: he handed over one hundred and eighty palace women in the palace to Sun Wu for training, saying that he wanted to test Sun Wu's military training ability. Sun Wu's approach was uncreative--he killed the disobedient palace maid, Li Wei. Under the shock, the other palace ladies obediently obeyed.
It's easy to make up a story like this.
After all, there is a common idiom called "killing chickens and frightening monkeys".
Lao Qin's feeling, "Wu Gong Xunmei" is most likely a story made up by Sima Qian's head.
You see, there is a sentence said by Sun Wu in the story - after Sun Wu trained the palace women, he said to King Wu without shame: "Since the soldiers are neat, the king can try to look at it, but the king can use it as he wants, although he can go to the water and fire." ”
This sentence immediately exposed the fictionality of the story.
The reason is clear, since Sun Wu is a big soldier, he should know that training and actual combat are two different things.
- You can make the palace women at your mercy through the killing demonstration, but it does not mean that these palace women can go to battle to kill the enemy, let alone what "although it is still possible to go to the water and fire".
After Sima Qian finished telling the story of "Wu Gong Xunmei", he said a very general cliché, saying: "So Lu Lu knew that Sun Tzu could use troops, and he thought he would be a general." Western Chu Chu, Into Yin, Northern Wei Qi Jin, prominent princes, grandsons and powerful Yan. That is, the entire content of Sun Wu's biography is explained.
The historical State of Wu did break through Qiang Chu and capture the Chu capital Yingcheng, but according to the records of books such as Zuo Chuan and Chinese, it was the masterpiece of Wu Zixu assisting King Wu, and there was nothing for Sun Wu.
Those "Northern Wei Qi Jin, prominent princes, Sun Tzu and Powerful Yan" are completely empty words, only because the thirteen articles of the Art of War "Sun Tzu" have been handed down, and the thirteen articles of the "Sun Zi" of the Art of War infer that there is Sun Wu, so it is applied to Sun Wu.
Sima Qian introduced Sun Wu in this way, and later historians did not doubt him and believed it to be true, but in the end they felt that the "History of Sun Wu' Biography" was too false, so they tried to improve Sun Wu's deeds, so they created the legendary section of Wu Zixu's "Seven Recommended Grandsons".
Moreover, in order to make Sun Wu's deeds of Chu more concrete, he also joined Sun Wu's strategy of "instigating the rebellion of the Tong state against Chu" and "cutting chu because of grain to the enemy", and finally "destroyed Chu in five wars" and attacked the Chu capital in one fell swoop.
To be honest, these so-called "seven recommended grandsons", "instigating the rebellion of the Tong state of Chu", "because of grain to the enemy", "five wars to destroy Chu", all have no historical traces to find, more like the language of novelists, it is not worth mentioning at all. It is clear that this is the routine of "ancient history is layered and layered": the farther away from Sun Wu's time, the more people "know" Sun Wu's deeds, the richer the material, of course, the more counterfeit and inferior.
In the Song Dynasty, Ouyang Xiu also painstakingly arranged Sun Wu's lineage in the New Book of Tang dynasty lineage table.
Because of the different interpretations of the "New Book of Tang Dynasty and the Genealogy Table of the Prime Minister", it has led to different controversies among later generations about "Sun Wu's birthplace", such as Huimin, Lechang, and Boxing. Now about Sun Wu's cemetery, it was actually designated by a person who claimed to be a descendant of Sun Wu during the Qing Dynasty in Suzhou called "Sun Dun". This, there is today's Suzhou Xiangcheng Sun Wu Memorial Garden and the so-called "Sun Wu Tomb".
According to Ouyang Xiu, Sun Wu's exact lineage began with Shun's descendant Yu Fu's father. Yu Fu's father's son Man was rewarded after the victory of King Wu of Zhou and became the first monarch of the State of Chen. Chen Guo passed on the 10th and 12 monarchs, and by the time of Chen Huan, civil unrest occurred in Chen Guo. Among them, Chen Ligong's son, exhausted by the chaos, fled to the State of Qi, where he passed on the lineage and spread his branches. The completed great-grandson book was given the surname Sun by the Duke of Qi Jing, which was for Sun Shu. Sun Shu gave birth to his descendants, and Sun Relied to give birth to sun and children.
Ouyang Xiu arranged Sun Wu's lineage in a similar way, but he could not explain the strange phenomenon that Sun Wu was a Qi state and why he came to the State of Wu to seek an official.
It is reasonable to say that Sun Wu had great talent and should first seek an official position in the State of Qi, but there is no record of this in the State of Qi.
For comparison, Wu Zixu, a contemporary of Sun Wu, was originally a Native of the Chu State, but why did he appear in the State of Wu, why he asked the King of Wu for an official, and how he assisted the King of Wu, almost all of his experiences, his ins and outs, are all clear and unambiguous.
Through in-depth research, Mou Tingxiang, a Qing Dynasty man, boldly proposed: Sun Wu is basically Wu Zixu.
In his "Slush House Magazine • Correction of Sun Tzu", he said: "In ancient times, there was Wu Zixu, but there was no Sun Wu. The thirteen articles of the hereditary "Sun Tzu", that is, the books written by Wu Zixu. ”
But no, Lao Qin felt that the trajectory of Sun Wu's activities written in the "Records of History" was closely attached to Wu Zixu, as if Sun Wu was Wu Zixu's shadow, and the two were basically the same person.
One of the important bases of Mou Tingxiang is that the "Eleventh Year of Zuo Chuan And Lamentation" records that "Zi Xu belonged to his son Yu Qi Bao," and was of the Wang Sun clan. ”
That is, Wu Zixu's son later fled into the State of Qi and changed his surname to "Wang Sun"; this "Wang Sun" was later divided into two surnames: "Wang" and "Sun". That is, "Sun Zhen was born to A Zhenjian and was a descendant of Sun Wu" mentioned in the "Records of History", and this Sun Zhi was actually a descendant of Wu Zixu.
In fact, not only Mu Tingxiang suspected that in the era of Wu Wang Vachu, there was no such thing as "Sun Wu", and since the Song Dynasty, more and more scholars have questioned "Sun Wu".
The Southern Song Dynasty scholar Ye Shi said bluntly: "All the warriors and sun warriors are delusional and not factual. ”
Regarding "Sun Tzu" and his person, it is mentioned in the "Qi Ce" and "Wei Ce" of the Warring States Policy that he gave advice to Tian Ji, that is, referring to Sun Zhen. The Chu Ce also mentions a "grandson" who served as a shangqing in the Zhao state. But this "grandson" is Xunzi.
Because "Xunzi", "Han Feizi", and "Lü's Spring and Autumn" often take "Sun" and "Wu" together, saying that "Sun Wu Zhiluo" and "Sun Wu's Book", let us know that there are two military books in the world: "Sun Tzu" and "Wu Zi" two martial arts.
In modern times, some scholars such as Qian Mu and Saito Humble Hall of Japan have mistakenly believed that the author of the art of war "Sun Tzu", which has been circulating in the world, is Sun Zhen.
Qian Mu even thought that Sun Zhen was Sun Wu.
He said: "The name of Sun Zhen is nameless because of his feet, and then Wu Yan is the name of the person." ”
But now we already know that from the bamboo jianli excavated from the tomb of Yinqueshan Han in Linyi, Shandong Province in 1972, there are both the same "Sun Tzu's Art of War" and a "Sun Zi's Art of War" that has been circulated in the world, which proves that "Sun Tzu's Art of War" and "Sun Zhen's Art of War" are two different martial arts.
That is, the "Art of War of Sun Tzu" and the "Art of War of Sun Zhen" correspond to the "Wu Sun Zi" and "Qi Sun Zi" mentioned in the "Hanshu Yiwen Zhi" respectively.
But the composition of this "Wu Sun Tzu" is also quite suspicious.
Many believe that although "Wu Sun Tzu" occasionally involves the Wu-Vietnam War, it mainly reflects and embodies the military thinking of the Warring States period, so a considerable part of its composition should be in the Warring States period.
The Southern Song Dynasty scholar Ye Shi believed that "Wu Sun Zi" was "the work of the mountain forest virgins in the late Spring and Autumn Period and the early Warring States period".
Mou Tingxiang believes that Wu Zixu had written thirteen chapters of the Art of War "Sun Tzu", and that his descendants had comprehensively sorted out this work after fleeing into the State of Qi, and named it "Sun Zi wu". "Sun Tzu" in "Sun Tzu Wu" is an honorific title, and "Wu" refers to the Book of Soldiers and the Book of Martial Arts. Later generations did not notice, and mistook the title of the book "Wu" for a personal name, so they left a "Sun Wu" and a right "Sun Wu", creating a Sun Wu whose life trajectory was similar to Wu Zixu's.
This point of view of Mou Tingxiang was deeply believed by Lao Qin.