Lord Shang Revisited 5

7. The SJS Military Group

I now come to the chapters in Duyvendak's fifth layer. Here, as with his first layer, Duyvendak suggests that "they may contain old fragments." These are the three military chapters. At first sight SJS 10 deals with offensive warfare, SJS 11 is more general, and SJS 12 is on defensive warfare. All very tidy and neat. But Duyvendak's word "fragments" may alert us to the possibility that these chapters are not coherent entities. His own notes, especially with SJS 10, point to parallel ideas in the Sundz. With that hint, we may notice something of surpassing interest, which, as with his notes to SJS 4, Duyvendak himself did not quite see. It is this: if we remove the tactical maxims from SJS 10, what is left is a perfectly coherent essay, not on war, but on statecraft: the political preconditions for the successful waging of war. In that essay, without the Sundz-like intrusions, it is not even necessary to puzzle over the last line, as Duyvendak did. It is witty, but its meaning turns out to be clear without emendation.

My reconstruction of the original is given on p5 of the handout. I won't here expound it in detail.

We may immediately ask, Is the same situation found in SJS 11? In a word, Yes. See the handout, p6.

Following on these two results, we will be tempted to ask, what about the third chapter in this group? That is, what happens if we remove the Mician defensive war maxims from SJS 12? Here I must disappoint you. SJS 12 consists of nothing but defensive war maxims. When those are removed, the chapter vanishes completely. Thus SJS 10-12 in their original form did not have a common nature, and they did not form a layer. SJS 10-11 are overwritten statecraft essays, whereas SJS 12 is an original military essay. Yet they are obviously meant to form a group in the text as we have it.

How do we explain this? First, I would suggest that the militarizing of SJS 10-11, and the composing of the original SJS 12 as a defensive essay to make a group with them, occurred at the same time. Then any indications of earliest possible date (terminus a quo) in any of the three, as amended, will apply to all. Second, SJS is otherwise a work of statecraft. So indeed are SJS 10-11 in their original form. Why should the text, at the point where it added SJS 12, suddenly venture into warfare? The likely answer, I think, is that it was desired to represent Lord Shang, the supposed author of the text as militarily knowledgeable.

On the strength of the SJS text, Lord Shang since early Imperial times has been regarded as a statesman and political theorist. But if we read the comments made nearest to his own time, namely, one Bamboo Annals entry (late 04c) and one remark by Sywndz (mid 03c), we find that his image, his public persona, is that of a great general. I suggest that in SJS 12 and in the addenda to SJS 10 and 11 we see the figure of Lord Shang beginning to be associated with the SJS statecraft theories. If so, then this association is not original, and the statecraft group sponsoring the SJS probably had no lineal connection with Lord Shang. Rather, Lord Shang was apparently brought in to give the SJS text greater weight and authority in Chin.

When might this have happened? Our best current date for the Mician writings drawn on by SJS 12 is roughly mid 03c. This, then, is the earliest likely date for the militarization of the SJS text. Was there a reason, somewhere in that vicinity, for the SJS group to have felt the need to attach themselves to a great name, and thus to gain greater definition within Chin as a school of thought? It is hard to answer the question if it is asked in this way. But we may suspect that the ongoing SJS enterprise will have been affected, in some way, by the major Chin ministerial figures of the time. The most important of such figures are Fan Swei, who held office from c0265, and Lw Bu-wei, who appeared in c0250. To summarize an investigation which there is no time to describe in detail, we believe that we can detect in SJS the influence of both these men. One attractive possibility is that the success of Lw Bu-wei, whose first achievement in office was military (the conquest of the remaining portion of the Jou royal domain), might have inspired the notion that the great name of Lord Shang, whose initial military exploits against Ngwei were still remembered (indeed, there was in Han a separate military text attributed to him), would be more easily attached to the text if the text itself showed military as well as civilian knowledge.

We thus suggest that the SJS text, in adding SJS 12 and making military changes to the two preceding chapters, is reacting to the advent of Lw Bu-wei in c0250, and drawing on military writings which themselves were current, and relatively new, in c0250. Here is a specific instance of the text's general tendency to reconfigure itself for competitive advantage in the world around it. Confronted by the challenge of a new foreign military hero, the SJS text conjured up the memory of an earlier and greater foreign military hero, in order to remain competitive in the marketplace of ideas.

 

All lectures and abstracts posted on this site are Copyright © by their authors.

14 Oct 2003 / Contact The Project / Exit to Lectures Page