Musical pitches

Critical Text

Yinqueshan Text

。。。變不。。。貙變不可勝窮也奇正環相生如環之毋端孰能窮之

Shiyijia zhu Text

聲不過五五聲之變不可勝聽也色不過五五色之變不可 觀也 味不過五五味之變不可勝嘗也戰勢不過奇正奇正之變不可勝窮也 奇正相生如循環之無端孰能窮之哉

Translation

Musical pitches do not exceed five, yet all their variations cannot be heard. Colors do not exceed five, yet all their variations cannot be seen. Tastes do not exceed five, yet all their variations cannot be tasted. The shi of battle do not exceed the extraordinary and the orthodox, yet all their variations cannot be exhausted. The extraordinary and the orthodox circle and give birth to each other, as a circle has no beginning. Who is able to exhaust it?

Annotations

". . . cannot all be heard/seen/tasted." "All" translates sheng 勝, otherwise "victory." We have not been able to find a way to preserve that English word, or a close relative, in this phrase.

Yang Bing'an (p. 64) refers us to parallel passages in the Huainanzi (Yuandao 原道), which derive from this, and to the Zuozhuan, Zhao 6, which contains the earliest known discussions of this five-fold division of the senses. Thus this passage places the extraordinary and orthodox within the psychology and physics of Warring States perceptual theory, suggesting that this pair is as basic to strategy as sounds, colors and tastes are to the human ability to know the world. By contrast to the senses, here there are only two items, the transformations of which give rise to every possible strategic configuration. Had the Sunzi been composed a few centuries later, the comparison might have been made instead using the terms yin and yang.