Traditional accounts list Master Sun’s given name as Sun Wu, and his courtesy name as Changqing, meaning “venerable minister.” Yet in spite of his impact on China, many of the details of his life, and even portions of the history attributed to him, remain mysterious, disagreed over, or in doubt. Even his place of origin is disagreed on by even the earliest of records on the man: The Spring and Autumn Annals declare that Sun Tzu came from the northeastern state of Qi, whereas Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian identify him as a native of the southeastern state of Wu. You might think of it as historians being unable to agree whether Samuel Adams was a son of Massachusetts or Florida.

Origins aside, he is known – or at least told – to have been a chief adviser and general for the King of Wu, Helu, in the late Spring and Autumn. As mentioned in Episode 12, he is said to have been a instrumental part of Helu’s devastating campaign against the neighboring Chu in 512 BCE, though even that is not agreed on. Sima Qian is the chief proponent of Sun-as-Wu-General theory, and it is from the Grand Historian that we get a tale that brings to light Master Sun’s unique personality and disposition:

In the period before he was taken on as military adviser to King Helu, The monarch of Wu sought to test this supposed “military genius’” skills. To that end, he ordered Sun Tzu to train a regiment of very peculiar soldiers – specifically, 180 of the king’s own concubines. Unperturbed, Sun Tzu divided the women into 2 companies, with a favored concubine of the king as the commanding officer of each. His “army” duly assembled, he ordered it to face right… to which the 180 women giggled and demurred. They were no soldiers, after all.

Sun Tzu turned to the king calmly and explained, in any army it was the duty of the general – in this case, himself – to ensure that his soldiers understood the orders he had given, and it was the duty of his officers to ensure the soldiers carried those orders out. In this instance, perhaps, he simply had not been clear enough in his orders. And so he once again ordered his concubine army to face right, this time making sure that he laid out his instructions in a simple and clear manner that all could understand.

When the women once again guffawed at the command, his reaction was quite different. Immediately he order the execution of the two officers – the favored concubines of King Helu. The king, of course, raise quite the objection at this turn of affairs, and demanded that Sun Tzu explain himself. Sun Tzu once again stated that, assuming the general’s orders had been understood, it was the duty of his officers to carry those orders out to completion. If the officers failed in that duty, they were less than useless to the army and needed to be made an example of. Moreover, Master Sun continued to the likely fuming king, once the monarch had entrusted his general with a mission, it was the general’s duty to see that mission to completion in whatever way he saw best, even if elements of it contradicted the wishes of the king. In wartime, he explained, the military machine must exist beyond the whims of civil authority.

The axe fell, and the 180 concubines became 178. Two new officers were appointed by Sun Tzu… and once more his order sounded out: face right. Both companies, now horrifyingly aware of the consequence of further frivolity and womanly idleness, executed that and every other maneuver flawlessly.

Sun Tzu was a man who took the military very seriously indeed. Needless to say, in spite of his loss of two concubines, King Helu gave Sun Tzu the job…

As traditionally remembered, it was on the subsequent battlefields of Chu under the Wu banner that Sun Tzu would find his inspiration to write his master work: the Sunzi Bingfa, which translates literally as “Master Sun’s Military Rules,” but which has become more artfully known in the English speaking world as The Art of War. Traditional tellings aside, though, the actual circumstances – and indeed authorship – of the work remain as historically unclear as the purported author’s own history. Though historian Sima Qian recounts Sun Tzu commanding at the decisive Battle of Boju, for instance, the far more detailed account of the battle provided in the Zuo Zhuan makes no mention of the general.

An alternative and modern interpretation of the text suggests that, given the 2000 years of cumulative warfare experience the Chinese already had under their collective belts, and especially given the book’s lack of a definitive and singular voice – frequently repeating itself, and including even the most basic and obvious of strategies and concepts – it’s far more likely that the work was initially compiled by Master Sun Wu as a reiteration of other, earlier military works alongside his own expertise. Then, over the following century or so, was reworked and edited with updated tactics and strategies that simply had not existed in the time of Sun Tzu. As such, it was a collection and continuation of the military stratagems that had proved themselves successful, rather than the work of a single man. While it is widely accepted that Sun Wu authored the core of the work, the anachronisms present virtually guarantee that there were significant contributions and alterations made in the century after his death. These anachronisms include: forces numbering in the hundreds of thousands, which did not exist until the Warring States Period; reference to protracted city sieges, given that cities during the Spring and Autumn were both weakly fortified and strategically unimportant; advanced and detailed use of spies and unorthodox tactics; and the book’s emphasis on the speed and maneuverability of infantry, whereas combat in the Spring and Autumn had uniformly revolved around chariot warfare over infantry.

Here's where that except my own words were pulled from, btw: http://thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/episode-14-the-art-of-war/

Give it a listen. We're currently right at the end of the Warring States Period and beginning the Qin Dynasty.

Edit: ninja sourcing...

• Sima Qian. "The Records of the Grand Historian" (full text, simplified Mandarin)

• Sawyer, Ralph D. (2007), The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China, New York: Basic Books