Burning of books and burying of scholars

The burning of books and burying of scholars (), also known as burning the books and executing the ru scholars, refers to the purported burning of texts in 213 BCE and live burial of 460 Confucian scholars in 212 BCE by the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty. This was 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, and later Confucians did not question the story. As one recent historian put it, 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 school 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 "Confucians", since that school had not yet been formed as such. According to the Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), after Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, unified China in 221 BCE, his chancellor Li Si suggested suppressing intellectual discourse to unify thought and political opinion. Chancellor Li Si said: "I, your servant, propose that all historians' records other than those of Qin's be burned. With the exception of the academics whose duty includes possessing books, if anyone under heaven has copies of the Shi Jing [Classic of Poetry], the Shujing [Classic of History], or the writings of the hundred schools of philosophy, they shall deliver them (the books) to the governor or the commandant for burning. Anyone who dares to discuss the Shi Jing or the Classic of History shall be publicly executed.

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