始計

兵 (bing) here means 'war' or 'military affairs' in the broadest sense — not merely 'soldiers' or 'weapons'. The opening line establishes warfare as a matter of statecraft requiring the most serious deliberation.

The Five Factors (五事) form the core analytical framework of the Sunzi. They recur throughout the text and were adopted by virtually all later Chinese military theorists.

道 (dao) is translated as 'moral cause' following the explanation in the next section: it is the bond between ruler and people that makes them willing to fight and die. This is distinct from the Daoist metaphysical sense of dao.

The five virtues of the general (智信仁勇嚴) became canonical in Chinese military thought. Cao Cao's commentary notes these must be balanced: courage without wisdom leads to recklessness, benevolence without strictness to weakness.

曲制 (qu zhi) refers to the organizational structure of the army — the division into units and the regulations governing each. 官道 (guan dao) refers to the chain of command and the duties of officers. 主用 (zhu yong) refers to the management of supplies and expenditures.

The Seven Calculations (七計) are a diagnostic checklist for comparing one's own state against the enemy before committing to war. They transform the abstract Five Factors into concrete, comparative questions.

詭道 (gui dao, 'the way of deception') is one of the Sunzi's most famous concepts. It asserts that warfare is fundamentally deceptive — honesty and fair play are liabilities. This was a radical claim in a culture that valued ritual propriety (li) even in war.

勢 (shi) is one of the most difficult terms in Chinese strategic thought. It combines the ideas of strategic advantage, positional energy, and momentum — the configuration of power that makes victory almost inevitable. Here translated as 'strategic momentum' and 'opportunity.'

The twelve paired stratagems (能而示之不能 through 親而離之) form a mnemonic catalogue of tactical deceptions. Each pair follows the pattern: [when the enemy has quality X], [do Y]. They became a standard training tool for Chinese military officers.

不可先傳 literally 'cannot be transmitted in advance.' Sunzi means that these principles must be applied flexibly — there is no fixed formula. The specific application depends on the situation at hand.

廟算 (miao suan, 'temple calculations') refers to strategic planning conducted in the ancestral temple before a military campaign. In ancient China, war was sanctioned by ritual: the ruler would deliberate with his ministers in the temple, consult divination, and only then commit to action. Sunzi transforms this ritual into a rational planning process.

The Yinqueshan bamboo strip text (銀雀山漢簡, discovered 1972) preserves a version of this chapter largely consistent with the received text, confirming its antiquity. Minor character variants exist but do not affect the meaning.