The General's Garden (Tangut translation)

The manuscript was collected from the abandoned fortress city of Khara-Khoto by Aurel Stein in 1914, and is held at the British Library in London, where it is catalogued as Or.12380/1840.

[2] The translation dates to the 12th or early 13th century, and predates any of the extant Chinese editions by some two hundred years.

The General's Garden is considered to be a Song dynasty (960–1279) forgery incorporating elements of Sun Tzu's Art of War and other earlier military treatises.

[16] The other major difference is the treatment of the final four sections of the text, relating to the "barbarians" of the north (Beidi), south (Nanman), east (Dongyi) and west (Xirong), which China traditionally saw itself as being surrounded by.

The Tangut translation only discusses the "Lords of the Steppes" in the north, and omits any description of the barbarians of the south, east and west.

[17] Ksenia Kepping suggests that the "Lords of the Steppes" mentioned in the Tangut translation refers to the Mongols who mounted raids on the Western Xia from 1205 onwards.

[18] On the other hand, Galambos notes that the "Lords of the Steppes" could equally have been intended to refer to other nomadic peoples living in the grasslands to the north of the Western Xia state, such as the Khitans and Jurchens.

[19] Kepping and Galambos have analysed some phrases that are common to several different Chinese military treatises that were translated into Tangut, including the General's Garden, and they note that the Tangut translations of the same Chinese phrases vary considerably.