;

And so in the military

Critical Text

¬G	§L	ª¾	©¼	ª¾	¤v
gu	bing	zhi	bi	zhi	ji
thus	military	know	other	know	self

¦Ê	¾Ô	¤£	¬p	¤£	ª¾
bai	zhan	bu	dai	bu	zhi
100	battle	not	danger	not	know

©¼	¦Ó	ª¾	¤v	¤@	³Ó
bi	er	zhi	ji	yi	sheng
other	and	know	self	one	victory

¤@	t	¤£	ª¾	©¼	¤£
yi	fu	bu	zhi	bi	bu
one	loss	not	know	other	not

ª¾	¤v	¨C	¾Ô	¥²	¬p
zhi	ji	mei	zhan	bi	dai
know	self	every	battle	necessary	danger

Yinqueshan Text

¬G§Lª¾¥Öª¾¤v¦ ¾Ô¤£¡C¡C¡C

Shiyijia zhu Text

Translation

And so in the military: Knowing the other and knowing oneself, In one hundred battles no danger. Not knowing the other and knowing oneself, One victory for one loss. Not knowing the other and not knowing oneself, In every battle certain danger.

Annotations

This is a justly famous passage of the Sunzi. (Chapter 10 presents it in a slightly more elaborate form, perhaps preserving an earlier version.) The bamboo strip from Yinqueshan breaks off before the passage ends. In our translation we followed the Wujing qishu edition, which ends with bai, "defeat," rather than the received text's dai, "danger." This is probably an error (and is corrected above), since the received text is both more awkward and also maintains the rhyme sequence, which would be lost by using bai ±Ñ, *b'wad.

The rhymes (or near rhymes) are as follows:

¤v *kieg
¬p *d'ag
¤v *kieg
t *bÕiweg
¤v *kieg
¬p *d'ag