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Sun Tzu in India

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Post  Guest Mon Dec 03, 2012 1:27 pm

I had read Sun Tzu some 10-15 years ago in the celebrated Samuel Griffith translation. At the time i was too young to realize the full significance of what i was reading. Having just read the book carefully a second time, i wish to share some thoughts on it.

Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War' is the most celebrated work on military strategy to have come out of China and it retains significance to this day even though it was written more than two thousand years ago. In his foreword to the Griffiths translation, first published in 1963, the well known British military writer B.H. Lidell Hart writes:

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"Sun Tzu's essays on 'The Art of War' form the earliest of known treatises on the subject, but have never been surpassed in comprehensiveness and depth of understanding. They might well be termed the concentrated essence of wisdom on the conduct of war. Among all the military thinkers of the past, only Clausewitz is comparable, and even he is more 'dated' than Sun Tzu, and in part antiquated, although he was writing more than two thousand years later. Sun Tzu has clearer vision, more profound insight, and eternal freshness.....

Some fifteen years later, in the middle of the Second World War, I had several visits from the Chinese Military Attache, a pupil of Chiang Kai-shek. He told me that my books and General Fuller's were principal textbooks in the Chinese military academies--whereupon i asked: 'What about Sun Tzu?' He replied that while Sun Tzu's book was venerated as a classic, it was considered out of date by most of the younger officers, and thus hardly worth study in the era of mechanized weapons. At this, I remarked that it was time they went back to Sun Tzu, since in that one short book was embodied almost as much about the fundamentals of strategy and tactics as I had covered in more than twenty books. In brief, Sun Tzu was the best short introduction to the study of warfare, and no less valuable for constant reference in extending study of the subject."


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My own recent interest in Sun Tzu was aroused when a relative of mine--a top business executive--requested me to recommend a good translation of Sun Tzu's book since it had been recommended to her by one of her superiors. I told her to procure the Griffiths translation, and then subsequently obtained this book for myself. I read the book slowly, writing a few notes in the margins. I wish to analyze this book because i think doing so would benefit both the reader and myself. I believe the principles elucidated in this book are very practical and beneficial if implemented in an expedient manner.

While reading Sun Tzu, i was also struck by two Indian texts which i had earlier read and which had at least some significant overlap with Sun Tzu's book. It is also possible there are other such Indian texts.

(to be continued)
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Post  Guest Mon Dec 03, 2012 1:29 pm

This is a test.
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