In the Wei column, in the cell for the thirtieth year of King Hui, I wrote a single line.

It is very short: Qi took the crown prince of Wei, Shen, prisoner and killed the general Pang Juan.

The cells of a chronological table are narrow: one cell for a year, one column for a state. They have no room for stories. When a man's name drops into a cell, it is often the last time he appears.

This cell faces the year 341 BCE. Across the same row, in the last column, the state is Qi, and the same battle is written down differently: in the second year of King Xuan, Qi defeated Wei at Maling; Tian Ji, Tian Ying and Tian Fen led the troops, with Sunzi as strategist.

One row, two columns, one event. Set side by side, they do not match in several places. I will take them one at a time.

1. A Name in Six Chapters

The name Pang Juan appears in six chapters of my book: the joint biography of Sunzi and Wu Qi, the Hereditary House of Wei, the Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan, the biography of Lord Shang, the biography of Lord Mengchang, and this Table of the Six States.

None of the six is his biography.

The most appearances are in the biography of Sunzi and Wu Qi, nine of them. But that chapter is Sun Bin's biography; in it Pang Juan is a fellow student, the man who wronged him, a name written on a tree. In each of the other five chapters he appears once, in a single sentence. The Hereditary House of Wei records that Wei sent him to lead the army. The Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan records that Qi killed him. The biography of Lord Mengchang, introducing Tian Ying's career, adds in passing that the battle killed Pang Juan. The biography of Lord Shang, narrating the years of Shang Yang's rise, slips in one line saying that in this year Qi killed the Wei general Pang Juan. In the table it is that one cell. The Hereditary House of Wei has one more place where the character "Juan" is written alone, without the surname.

The six have one thing in common. Apart from the passage in the biography of Sunzi and Wu Qi where he studies the art of war with Sun Bin and wrongs him, every other appearance is for the sake of the battle of Maling.

2. Guiling Without Him

In the seventeenth year of King Hui of Wei, the Wei army besieged Handan in Zhao; in the eighteenth year it took the city. Zhao asked Qi for help, and the Qi army defeated Wei at Guiling. In the twentieth year Wei gave Handan back to Zhao, and the two states swore an alliance on the banks of the Zhang.

Who was Wei's commander in those years? The Hereditary House of Wei does not say. The biography of Sunzi and Wu Qi says that the Wei army left Handan, fought Qi at Guiling and was heavily defeated, and does not say either. In the table, both the Wei column and the Qi column record Guiling, and again do not say.

The biography says that Pang Juan became a general under King Hui of Wei. But which battle he fought before Maling, my book has not left a single word.

So in my book the traces Pang Juan leaves fall almost entirely on one place, Maling. We know his name because he was defeated there.

3. Wei Got to Maling First

The place name Maling is not appearing for the first time in Wei's annals.

In the first year of King Hui, Han and Zhao joined forces against Wei, defeated the Wei army at Zhuoze and surrounded the lord of Wei. Because Han and Zhao could not agree, King Hui did not die and Wei was not divided.

In the second year, 369 BCE, the Hereditary House of Wei says that the Wei army defeated Han at Maling. The table has a cell for it in the Wei column and another in the Han column; one reads "defeated Han at Maling," the other "Wei defeated us at Maling."

Twenty-eight years later, at a place called Maling, the Wei army was wholly defeated. Whether the two Malings are the same place I have not said; modern locations are also given differently by different scholars.

4. Three Generals or Two

On the Qi side at Maling, the chapters do not agree about who led the army either.

The biography of Sunzi and Wu Qi gives only Tian Ji's name. The Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan has Tian Ji and Tian Ying as generals and Sunzi as strategist. The biography of Lord Mengchang has Tian Ji going to attack Wei together with Sun Bin and Tian Ying. The Hereditary House of Wei says only that King Xuan of Qi used Sunzi's plan, and does not name who led. The table has three generals: Tian Ji, Tian Ying, Tian Fen.

The name Tian Fen appears, among these chapters, only in this cell of the table. In the Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan there is a Master Fen elsewhere: King Wei, comparing treasures with the king of Wei, said he had a minister called Master Fen who guarded Gaotang, so that the people of Zhao did not dare come east to fish in the river. Whether this Master Fen is the Tian Fen of the table I have not stated.

5. A General Just Recalled

I wrote Tian Ji's career in more detail in the Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan than in the biography.

The year Wei besieged Handan, King Wei of Qi discussed whether to help Zhao. The chief minister Zou Ji said it was better not to. Later Zou Ji fell out with Tian Ji, and a man called Gongsun Yue gave Zou Ji advice: why not plan an attack on Wei? Tian Ji will certainly be the commander. If he wins, your plan has succeeded; if he loses, he will either die at the front or be beaten back at the rear, and his life will be in your hands. So Zou Ji spoke to King Wei, who sent Tian Ji to attack Wei's Xiangling. After Wei took Handan, Qi raised an army and defeated Wei heavily at Guiling. In this chapter, Guiling is written without Sun Bin.

In King Wei's thirty-fifth year Gongsun Yue gave Zou Ji another idea: have someone take ten pieces of gold to the market to have his fortune told, calling himself one of Tian Ji's men and saying, I have fought three battles and won three, my fame shakes the world, and I want to do something great; is it a good omen? When the diviner came out, they were to seize him and take him to the king for questioning. Tian Ji heard of it, led his followers to attack Linzi in order to seize Zou Ji, failed, and fled. The table records this under 344 BCE in one line: Tian Ji attacked Qi and did not succeed.

The next year King Wei died and King Xuan took the throne. In King Xuan's second year Wei attacked Zhao, and King Xuan recalled Tian Ji and restored him to his former post.

So the general who led the army that killed Pang Juan had been, a few years earlier, a man in flight. Between Guiling and Maling lie not only thirteen years but also a struggle in the Qi court.

6. A Council, a Tree

The Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan and the biography write the battle of Maling very differently.

In the biography there are the vanishing cooking pits, the tree, the crossbows all firing at once. In the Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan there are no pits and no tree. There is a council.

In King Xuan's second year Wei attacked Zhao; Zhao was close to Han, and the two together struck Wei, and Zhao was defeated at Nanliang. Han asked Qi for help. King Xuan called his ministers together to discuss: was it better to help early or to help late? Zou Ji said it would be better not to help. Tian Ji said that if Qi did not help, Han would be broken and turn to Wei, so it was better to help early.

Sunzi said: neither the Han nor the Wei army is yet worn out. To rescue now is to take Wei's blows in Han's place, and then take orders from Han. Moreover, Wei intends to destroy other states, and Han, seeing itself about to perish, will certainly turn east and appeal to Qi. If we use this time to bind ourselves more deeply to Han and wait a little longer to take advantage of Wei's exhaustion, we shall gain both great advantage and honor.

King Xuan said it was good, quietly told the Han envoy so, and sent him home. Relying on Qi's backing, Han fought five battles and won none, and finally turned east and entrusted the state to Qi. Only then did Qi raise an army: Tian Ji and Tian Ying as generals, Sunzi as strategist, to save Han and Zhao; they defeated Wei heavily at Maling, killed the Wei general Pang Juan and took Crown Prince Shen prisoner. Afterwards the kings of the three Jin states, led by Tian Ying, went to pay court to the king of Qi at Bowang, swore an alliance, and left.

In this chapter Pang Juan has one sentence: the Qi army killed the Wei general Pang Juan. Of what happened on the battlefield, there is not a word.

Both chapters are mine. In one there is a tree; in the other, a council. In the council, a Wei general's end is reckoned as an account of time: when to strike, when to wait. That is the feeling I get on reading it; it is not a sentence from the chapter.

7. The Following Year

In the biography of Lord Shang, the very next sentence after Maling is this: the next year Wei Yang urged Duke Xiao of Qin that Wei had been badly beaten by Qi the year before and the other lords had abandoned it, so this was the time to attack; Wei could not withstand Qin and would certainly move east; once it had moved east, Qin, holding the strong ground of the Yellow River and the mountains, could face east and subdue the lords, and this would be the work of a true king.

Duke Xiao sent Wei Yang to attack Wei, and Wei sent Prince Ang to meet him. When the armies faced each other, Wei Yang wrote to Prince Ang: we were once good friends, and now we are generals of two states; I cannot bear to attack you, so let us meet, make a covenant, drink our fill and withdraw our troops, for the peace of Qin and Wei. Prince Ang believed him. At the drinking after the covenant, Wei Yang's hidden armed men sprang out, seized the prince, attacked his army and destroyed it, and brought the prince back to Qin.

The Hereditary House of Wei puts this in the thirty-first year of King Hui, and the table in 340 BCE: the year after Pang Juan's death, Wei lost another general.

Then King Hui of Wei was afraid. The biography of Lord Shang says he sent envoys to give the land west of the river to Qin in order to make peace, and Wei then left Anyi and moved its capital to Daliang. The Hereditary House of Wei writes the move a little differently: Qin, Zhao and Qi attacked together; Qin used Lord Shang and its land reached the river; Qi and Zhao beat Wei again and again; Anyi was too close to Qin, so Wei moved to Daliang and made Prince He crown prince. After Crown Prince Shen was captured, the place of crown prince went to Prince He.

King Hui of Wei was later also called King Hui of Liang. In the Mencius he is called that.

For Qi, Pang Juan's death was a victory; for Qin, it was an opportunity.

8. Meng Ke Comes

In the Wei column of the table, in the thirty-fifth year of King Hui, 336 BCE, there are three characters: "Mencius came." After them, one more line: the king asked what would profit the state, and was answered that a ruler must not speak of profit.

The Hereditary House of Wei writes it at greater length. I wrote that King Hui, often burdened by war, courted worthy men with humble courtesy and generous gifts, and that Zou Yan, Chunyu Kun and Meng Ke all came to Liang. When he met Meng Ke the king said at once: I am not clever; my armies have been broken three times abroad, the crown prince was taken, the senior general died, the state is empty, and I have shamed the ancestral temple and altars of my forebears; I am deeply ashamed. You, old sir, have come a thousand li and condescended to arrive at the court of my small state: what will you do to profit my country? Meng Ke answered: you should not speak of profit in this way. If the ruler wants profit, the high officials will want profit; if the high officials want profit, the common people will want profit; with high and low contending for profit, the state is in danger.

In the three characters "senior general died" I did not note who the senior general was. In my book, the generals recorded as dying in the battle of Maling have only one name.

There is another passage, in the Mencius, recording King Hui's own words: Jin was once the strongest state under heaven; in my own time, in the east I was defeated by Qi and my eldest son died there; in the west I lost seven hundred li of land to Qin; in the south I was humiliated by Chu. I am ashamed of this, and wish to wash it all away for the sake of the dead; what should I do?

What is said here is "died." What I wrote is "captured." The Mencius does not say whether the eldest son was Crown Prince Shen; if he was, then some in Wei told it that he was captured and some that he died. Of the two accounts, my book kept one, and the other is in another book.

Coda

Back to the row for 341 BCE.

In the Wei column there is a name: Pang Juan. In the Qi column there is a strategist: Sunzi.

The biography says that as Pang Juan was dying he said something, resenting that he had made the other man's name. In the table, the name of the man who became famous is not written either.

Pang Juan has no biography. His name was carried into my book, again and again, by other people's stories: Sun Bin's biography, the house of the Tian of Qi, Lord Shang's biography, Lord Mengchang's biography, and this table. The names on the battlefields of his living years, the words spoken in his camp, the things he discussed with the king of Wei, my book has not kept.

What the table left him is five characters.

Sources and editorial boundaries

1. Core material: Shiji ch. 15, Table of the Six States, the Wei column from the seventeenth to the thirty-fifth year of King Hui and the corresponding cells of the Qi column from the twenty-sixth year of King Wei to the second year of King Xuan; ch. 44, Hereditary House of Wei, King Hui, first to thirty-fifth year; ch. 46, Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan, King Wei's twenty-sixth to thirty-sixth year and King Xuan's second year; ch. 68, biography of Lord Shang, from "the next year, Qi defeated the Wei army at Maling" to "moved the capital to Daliang"; ch. 75, biography of Lord Mengchang, the opening passage on Tian Ying; ch. 65, biography of Sunzi and Wu Qi, Sun Bin section (used only to check where Pang Juan appears and the account of Guiling). The Shiji was read in the Kanripo edition KR2a0001 (tls text) on 3 November; printed editions are still to be checked, and no page numbers are given. The tls text carries no Three Commentaries, and they were not used.

2. Outside check: Mencius, Liang Hui Wang shang, 1.1 and 1.5, read in the Kanripo edition KR1h0001 (tls text) on 3 November; printed editions are still to be checked.

3. The Chinese version ends with the classical wording of the key passages retold here, as read in the Kanripo editions; printed editions are still to be checked.

4. Dates: Guiling (King Hui of Wei, year 18), Maling (year 30), the capture of Prince Ang (year 31), Mencius's coming (year 35) and Tian Ji's attack on Qi (King Wei of Qi, year 35) fall, by the Shiji's own Table of the Six States, in 353, 341, 340, 336 and 344 BCE. The Shiji's Warring States chronology differs from the Bamboo Annals and other sources, and the conversion is still to be verified; the Bamboo Annals were not read for this piece.

5. Where Pang Juan appears: a search of the Kanripo tls text of the Shiji for his name finds nine places in the biography of Sunzi and Wu Qi, one in the Hereditary House of Wei (plus one where only "Juan" is written), one in the Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan, one in the biography of Lord Shang, one in the biography of Lord Mengchang and one in the Table of the Six States. The printed editions were not checked chapter by chapter, nor were the Zhanguo ce, the Bamboo Annals or other outside material read; "the Shiji does not say" applies only to the tls text searched.

6. Accounts that differ: (1) The origin of the battle of Maling: the biography has Wei and Zhao attacking Han, the Hereditary House of Wei has Wei attacking Zhao, and the Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan has Wei attacking Zhao, with Zhao close to Han and the two striking Wei together; all three are left standing. (2) The Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan has Sunzi arguing in the court for delaying help, with no reduced cooking pits and no writing on a tree; the biography has the pits and the crossbows but no court debate. Whether these are two sides of one campaign or two separate sources, the text does not say; the piece sets them side by side without ruling. (3) The biography of Lord Mengchang, the Table and the Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan all place Maling in King Xuan's second year, while the Hereditary House of Wei places the same event in King Hui's thirtieth year; in the table the two are in the same row, 341 BCE. (4) On the order of Lord Shang's attack on Wei and the move to Daliang, the biography of Lord Shang has the capture of Prince Ang first and then the cession of land west of the river and the move; the Hereditary House of Wei puts the move and the change of crown prince in the same entry for King Hui's thirty-first year; the table does not record the move. The piece sets them side by side.

7. Tian Fen and Master Fen: whether the "Tian Fen" of the table is the same man as the "Master Fen" in the twenty-fourth year of King Wei in the Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan is not stated in the text; the piece raises only the question. Names in the Shiji are also written differently from chapter to chapter (for example "Sun Bin" and "Sunzi"); the piece follows each chapter's usage.

8. The Mencius and the Shiji: King Hui's own words in Mencius 1.5, "my eldest son died there," are read against "the crown prince was taken" in the Hereditary House of Wei; whether the "eldest son" is Crown Prince Shen the Mencius does not say, and commentaries were not checked, so this is still to be verified. Who is meant by "senior general died" in King Hui's words in the Hereditary House of Wei the text does not say, and the piece only raises the question. King Hui's words in the Mencius are that book's record, not the Shiji's wording.

9. The Yinqueshan bamboo text "Capturing Pang Juan" says Pang Juan was captured at Guiling, which does not agree with the chapters above. This follows standard accounts of Yinqueshan Han mu zhujian, vol. 1 (Wenwu, 1985); the book and its plates were not seen, and it is still to be verified. The piece does not use it in the body and notes it only here.

10. Inferences and limits: (1) No dialogue, inner thoughts or scenes have been invented; every "someone said" is a plain-language retelling of words recorded in the Shiji or the Mencius. (2) "This row of the table" and "set side by side" are the editor's way of reading, not a comparison made by Sima Qian. (3) "What the table left him is five characters" refers to the five characters "killed General Pang Juan" and is the editor's summary. (4) The Shiji does not record Pang Juan's native place, dates, or who taught him alongside Sun Bin; the modern locations of Guiling and Maling are disputed, so no coordinates are given. (5) Where Tian Ji fled the Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan does not say, and none has been supplied. (6) "That is the feeling I get on reading it" is an association made through the narrator's viewpoint, not a statement of the chapter. (7) Whether the Maling of King Hui's second year and the Maling of his thirtieth year are the same place the text does not say, and the piece only raises the question.