Sun Bin's Art of War
孫臏兵法 (Sun Bin Bingfa)
Victory goes to the commander who manipulates the enemy's expectations and terrain, deliberately feigning weakness, luring an opponent into overextension, and striking where he assumes safety, so that battle is decided before the armies actually collide.
- deception and feigned weakness as tactical doctrine
- terrain-based ambush
- authorship distinct from Sunzi, resolved by the 1972 discovery
- extension of Sunzi's principles into specific tactics
A military treatise by Sun Bin, whom tradition holds a descendant of Sun Tzu and who was crippled by a rival's punishment before avenging himself as a general for the State of Qi, most famously at the Battle of Maling in 342 BC. Long known only by title and presumed lost, the text was rediscovered in 1972 on bamboo slips in a Han-dynasty tomb at Yinqueshan, Shandong, alongside a separate copy of Sunzi's Art of War, resolving a two-thousand-year scholarly dispute over whether the two texts were actually the same work. It develops Sunzi's principles of deception and positioning into specific tactical doctrine, including feigned retreats and terrain-based ambush.
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