Concept
Burning of books and burying of scholars
Overview
The burning of books and burying of scholars was the purported burning of texts in 213 BCE and live burial of 460 Confucian scholars in 212 BCE ordered by Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang. The events were alleged to have destroyed philosophical treatises of the Hundred Schools of Thought, with the goal of strengthening the official Qin governing philosophy of Legalism.
Modern historians doubt the details of the story, which first appeared more than a century later in the Han dynasty official Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian. As a court scholar, Sima had every reason to denigrate the earlier emperor to flatter his own, but later Confucians did not question the story. According to the historian Ulrich Neininger, their message was, "If you take our life, Heaven will take the life of your dynasty."
Modern scholars agree that Qin Shi Huang gathered and destroyed many works that he regarded as incorrect or subversive. He ordered two copies of each text to be preserved in imperial libraries. Some were destroyed in the fighting following the fall of the dynasty. He had scholars killed, but not by being buried alive, and the victims were not rú (Chinese: 儒; lit. 'Confucians'), since that school had not yet been formed as such.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Few books have enjoyed greater popularity amongst all classes in China than _The Book of Filial Duty_. It may be called _The Book of Emperors_, from the fact that so many Emperors, both before and after Ming Huang, have commentated upon it. Equally it is _The Book of Youth_, being the first treatise of importance placed in the hands of children, after the horn books of elementary instruction.
Confucius, The book of filial duty
The author is tied to Burning of books and burying of scholars in the knowledge graph.
The destruction of the books was a curious incident. Shih Huang Ti, as appears from his calling himself "First Emperor," disliked being reminded of the fact that China had existed before his time; therefore history was anathema to him.
Bertrand Russell, The Problem of China
Close in meaning to Burning of books and burying of scholars; the term itself is not named.
It is said that his body, by his particular command, was not burnt, but that they made, in conformity with his order, two stone coffins, and buried both under the hill Janiculum, in one of which his body was laid, and in the other his sacred books, which, as the Greek legislators their tables, he had written out for himself, but had so long inculcated the contents of them, whilst he lived, into the minds and hearts…
Plutarch, Plutarch
Close in meaning to Burning of books and burying of scholars; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Burning of books and burying of scholars
Related ideas
- Book of Documents
- Book of Rites
- Book burning
- Shiji
- University of Chicago Press
- Mozi
- Mohism
- Legalism (Chinese philosophy)
- Paris
- Sima Qian
- Hundred Schools of Thought
- Cao Wei
- Taoism
- Tao
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Shang Yang
- Qin (state)
- Classic of Poetry
- Three Kingdoms
- Han dynasty
- Qin dynasty
- Li Si
- Oxford University Press
- Great Wall of China
Place in the tradition
Part of Agriculturalism.
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