China's First Emperor

When I started this blog I was taking courses  at the McGill Institute for Learning in Retirement and about to decide where to put my efforts for the coming semester.The MILR calendar in September said that Mimi Caouette’s study group on the Qin dynasty would prepare us for the extraordinary exhibition of artefacts and terra cotta warriors coming to the museum from China during the winter. I had no idea how prophetic that blurb would be.  I registered and chose for my presentation: the topic:” The Burning of the Books and the Killing of the Scholars”

Research done and writing completed, I felt the results were too bland and colourless.. I searched deeply in the bowels of cyberspace and found the beautiful reproduction of a painting or  tapestry from the Biblioteque National in Paris depicting the burning of the books and the killing of the scholars with little figures in strong reds, on an orange , yellow and green background. I put it as the cover page of my presentation and distributed it to the 22 members of the class. They seemed to be fascinaterd with it .Now I had signed up for an all day Qin colloquium at the Museum.Returning from a lunch break,  imagine my astonishment to find MY REPRODUCTION splashed across the whole projection screen. Where had they found my picture? Certainly MILR had prepared me well for the exhibition  but I do not know who had prepared the Museum. Here is the image.
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CHINA’S  FIRST EMPEROR:   THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS

The topic of book burning had struck a chord with me.  I think that we in the Western world find the destruction of books contemptible and associate it with Nazi Germany in the thirties. Heinrich Heine, the German poet and critic of the early nineteenth century is well-known for saying, “When books are burned, in the end people will be burned too.” Certainly the attempt to control people and their ideas through the banning or burning of books has a long and deplorable history. When I searched the subject on my computer I found the record of its practice revealing. Apart from the Vatican Index of prohibited books, at least 20 other instances of book banning were cited ranging from the Latin poet Ovid, to Robinson Crusoe, Les Miserables, Ernest Hemingway, Alice in Wonderland and even our own Quebec Padlock Law in 1937 which was in force until struck down in 1957. The earliest example mentioned occurred during the rule of the First Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang Di, in the Qin Dynasty between 259-210 B.C., my subject today for this blog.

Although the Chinese did not invent paper until 105 A.D.,books nevertheless existed. Silk was used to write on but because it was scarce and too expensive, books were made out of bamboo strips. The wood was first dried of its sap and then cut into thin strips of standard length (about 25 centimeters). These were then bound with hemp which was passed through grooves designed to keep the proper order of the “pages”.  It was then rolled up like a rug for storage and transport.                    

   To  describe the context for the burning of the books in about 213 B.C., the Warring States (six) had been defeated by the armies of Qin and united into one state ending a period when poetry and philosophy thrived and what was called “A Hundred Schools of Thought” existed. The most significant for the future of China were those representing Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, Mohism, and the Yin-Yang School. Each was advocating its views on human nature and the consequent ethics and principles to make a better world.

           The state of Qin had started to dominate militarily and diplomatically over neighbouring states by adopting legalism and legalist philosophy even before the First Emperor took power. Shang Yang who was employed as prime minister of Qin in 356 B.C. ordered Qin officials to get rid of Confucian books and to standardize the state philosophy as legalism.

          After unification when Shi Huang Di had successfully unified China and Li Si had become chief Councillor, the Emperor decided to abolish feudalism and adopt instead a centralized system in which each region was governed by aristocrats appointed by the Emperor. The Emperor was a vengeful autocrat, a paranoid individual, and the state developed a culture of violence.  Severe punishments, such as cutting off the nose or the foot were meted out for small crimes. Criticism of the Emperor was not allowed. Deterrents ruled the state because there were no customary laws before the unification and the defeated states were reluctant to give up their sovereignty.  There was considerable uneasiness and discontentment in the realm over many of the reforms taking place in the new nation. Amongst the complaints was resentment over the geographical location of the capital, tucked away in the northwestern corner of the empire as well as regret expressed by many over the abolition of feudalism.

The shrewd Li Si warned the emperor about followers of Confucius saying that “there are those who condemn your orders, and as soon as they hear that a decree has been issued, they debate its merits according to their own school of thought, opposing it secretly in their hearts at court and disputing it openly in the streets. This lowers the prestige of the sovereign and leads to the formation of factions below. It must be stopped.”  Then Li Si stunned the court by offering a proposition that would one day be seen as the beginning of the end of the Qin dynasty, a proposition so startling that many historians for centuries vilified the emperor for agreeing to it. He proposed that “all the official histories of the contending states, except the annals of Qin should be burned. Anyone who possesses the (Confucian) Book of Odes and the Book of History or the philosophical discourses of the hundred schools must present them to the proper civil authorities for burning”. He suggested that anyone who dared to discuss the works in public would be executed and their bodies left exposed for all to see. Anyone who refused the edict would have his face tattooed and be sent to do forced labour on the Great Wall which might well be a sentence of death. The only exceptions to this burning, which amounted to the destruction of many centuries of Chinese thought, were books on medicine and pharmacy, divination, agriculture and forestry. These were technical and therefore needed by the society.  Qin Shi Huang agreed to Li Si’s proposal and put the decree into effect in 213 B.C. Private academies were closed and also institutions relating to poetry and writing.

It is not known how many books were actually burnt but there is evidence that the burning actually took place. Apart from archeological evidence of this, there is mention in later years from scholars. The book burning has always been linked in the literature and history with the killing of the scholars (said to number 460) but recent research on the topic states that there is no independent evidence that the killings actually occurred. It is suggested that what had been a legend was turned into a historical fact.

In her writing, Frances Wood says the legend likely grew up as a result of disagreement between two groups of Confucian scholars and points out that others have been as guilty in their destructive censorship. If the scholars were not killed, it becomes only one exception to Heine’s prophetic warning.