China burns her books

China burns her books

‘History’. Said he Emperor, ‘begins with me.’ The wisdom of china flamed under the soldiers’ torches. But a long – dead philosopher, Confucius, had left a legacy which was indestructible.

IN THE third century BC the efficient millitary state of Ch’in defeated and crippled its neighbours Han and Wei. Having annexed much of the Han-Wei territories, Ch’in struck at Chu and Chi and further expanded its territory. Contemptuously marching through Han territory, the Ch’in armies turned against the mighty state of Chao, which threw 450,000 soldiers into the desperate defence of a threatened border town.

By a combination of intrigue and tactics the Ch’in ruler lured Chao’s soldiers away from their fortifications, encircled them, and slowly starved them out. The Ch’in armies then fell upon the emaciated Chao soldiers and cut them down, putting every prisoner to the sword. The way lay open for the achievement of Ch’in’s ultimate ambition. Between 230 and 221 Bc Ying Cheng, Prince of Ch’in, finally annexed the remaining territories of Han, Wei, Chu, Chi and Chao; together with those of the only remaining state, Yen. The enfeebled 800-year-old Chou dynasty had finally disappeared in about 256 BC. By 221 BC Ch’in incorporated the six conquered states into a single empire that we have since called, after Ch’in, China.

The civilizations of Egypt, Sumeria, Babylon and Greece had already passed their zenith; Indian culture flourished; Rome was locked in its long struggle with Carthage. But to Ying Cheng, China was the world: beyond its frontiers lived only barbarians. To keep them out he constructed across northern China the Great Wall, linking earlier walls into a 3,000 mile system (allowing for the twists and turns of mountains and valleys). Ying Cheng decreed that work on the wall should never cease and that his dynasty should last for ever. He commanded that henceforth he should be titled First Emperor and his successors Second, Third and Fourth Emperors, and so on.

Advised by his Grand Councillor, Li Ssu, a scholar who had risen from poverty, the Ch’in Emperor decided that history began with himself. He set himself the task of reorganizing China and stamping out all marks of the past. Local boundaries disappeared and statues toppled, but ideas were not so easily disposed of. Stung by a scholar’s criticism of his flattery of the emperor, Li Ssu retaliated by striking at scholarship itself. Ina memorandum to theemperor he observed that as the world had been unified and brought under a single law it was now the business of the common people to concentrate their efforts in agriculture and industry, while the role of scholars was to apply their intellect to law and administration. Instead of attending to their proper business, complained Li Ssu, scholars were probing into the past in order to criticize the present. This, he claimed, caused distrust and confusion in the land.

Master Kúng to his pupils, Confucius to the
Western world, the philosopher of ancient China,
was to outlast the fury of the emperor who built the
Great Wall (above). Imperial efforts to smash Confucianism
failed absolutely.

Li Ssu then came quickly to the point. ‘I advise your majesty to have destroyed, all ancient records (other than those of Ch’in), and all books on poetry, history, and philosophy except those in the royal library. Furthermore, | recommend that all who recite or discuss these subjects, be executed, and that those who complain against your majesty’s government, in the name of tradition should, together with their families, be beheaded.’ The Ch’in Emperor accepted this advice, which was codified, issued as an imperial decree, and put into effect.

A great burning of books followed. Much of the wisdom of ancient China, preserved so carefully for generations on bamboo and wooden tablets, disappeared in smoke. Then the public executioners busied themselves, ridding China of hundreds of its greatest scholars and sages. But the greatest atrocity was yet to come.

It had long irked Li Ssu, a scholar of the Legalisit school, that followers of Master K’ung, a philosopher who had died more than two and a half centuries before, commanded more influence among intellectuals than did the Legalists. The Grand Councillor therefore advised the Ch’in Emperor that the K’ung scholars were dangerous subversive men whose sly tongues could bring down his dynasty. The Emperor took little convincing: a year after the burning of the books he had 460 K’ung scholars rounded up and buried alive. That, thought the Emperor, was the end of them and their ideas!

In fact he was mistaken. The Emperor and his Grand Councillor had succeeded in destroying neither all the K’ung scholars nor their books. The philosophy that the Ch’in Emperor feared and hated was to survive his dynasty by more than 2,000 years.

Who were these K’ung scholars? Their history had begun more than three centuries before. In about 551 BC in the town of Tsou in eastern China there was born to the wife of an elderly minor official sur-named K’ung, a second son whom she called Ch’iu. K’ung Ch’iu grew up with a serious view of life and at 15 decided to devote his life to learning. His father had died when he was only three, his mother when he was 17. K’ung Ch’iu set up a school in his own house. His scholars called him K’ung Fu Tzu (K’ung the Master). Today he is better known in the West by his Latinized name, Confucius, and his followers are called Confucians.

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