Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars in Qin China (213 BC)

The burning of books and burying of scholars is the traditional name for two acts of repression under the Qin dynasty. In 213 BC, on the advice of the chancellor Li Si, the First Emperor ordered private copies of classical texts and the histories of rival states destroyed. In 212 BC more than 460 men in the capital, Xianyang, were put to death. The episode became the most famous symbol of tyranny in Chinese history, although modern historians question many details of the traditional account.

Background: unity, law and dissent

In 221 BC Qin completed the unification of China. Its ruler took the title Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor, and abolished the old system of hereditary feudal kingdoms. The empire was divided into commanderies and counties run by appointed officials.

The Qin state had long been shaped by the ideas later called Legalism, associated with thinkers such as Shang Yang and Han Feizi. Legalists argued that a ruler should govern through clear laws, rewards and punishments, not through appeals to tradition or to the virtue of ancient sages. Li Si, who had studied with the same teacher as Han Feizi, became the empire’s chancellor.

Other intellectual traditions still flourished, however. The court kept about seventy official scholars, called boshi (erudites), who advised on ritual and learning. Many followed the teachings of Confucius, which praised the rulers of the early Zhou dynasty as models of good government.

The court debate of 213 BC

The main source for what followed is the historian Sima Qian, writing about a century later in the Shiji. He describes a banquet at the Xianyang palace in 213 BC. One official praised the emperor for bringing peace by replacing the old feudal lords with commanderies and counties.

A scholar from the former state of Qi, Chunyu Yue, disagreed. He argued that the Shang and Zhou dynasties had lasted for centuries because their kings granted fiefs to sons and relatives, who could support the throne in a crisis. He warned that nothing that failed to follow antiquity could last long.

The emperor passed the question to Li Si. Li Si’s reply turned a debate on administration into a policy on knowledge.

Li Si’s proposal

Li Si argued that in the past, when the realm was divided, rival lords had encouraged scholars who used the past to criticise the present. Now that the empire was united, he said, private schools of learning undermined the law and created factions.

According to the Shiji, he proposed that:

• All historical records other than those of Qin should be burned.
• Apart from copies held by the official erudites, anyone possessing the Book of Odes, the Book of Documents or the writings of the hundred schools of thought should hand them to local officials to be burned.
• Anyone who dared to discuss the Odes or Documents should be executed in the marketplace, and anyone who used the past to criticise the present should be executed along with their family.
• Officials who knew of offences and failed to report them would share the guilt.
• Anyone who had not burned their books within thirty days would be tattooed and sent to forced labour.
• Books on medicine, divination and the planting of crops and trees were exempt.
• Those who wished to study the law should take officials as their teachers.

The emperor approved the proposal. It is important to note what it did not do. It did not order the destruction of all books, or even all copies of the classics: the erudites were allowed to keep theirs, and practical works were spared.

The executions of 212 BC

The second event took place the following year. Qin Shi Huang was deeply interested in immortality and employed many fangshi, masters of techniques such as alchemy and divination, to search for elixirs of life. In 212 BC two of them, Hou Sheng and Lu Sheng, fled the court, criticising the emperor as harsh and power-hungry.

Angered, the emperor ordered an investigation of scholars in Xianyang. Those questioned accused one another. Sima Qian says more than 460 people found to have broken prohibitions were put to death at Xianyang, as a warning to the empire. More people were banished to the frontier.

The emperor’s eldest son, Fusu, objected that the scholars all followed Confucius and that harsh punishment might unsettle the newly conquered realm. The emperor was angry and sent Fusu north to supervise the army of the general Meng Tian on the frontier. That decision would matter greatly after the emperor’s death in 210 BC.

Key people

• Qin Shi Huang (259–210 BC): the First Emperor, who approved the book order and the executions.
• Li Si (c. 280–208 BC): the chancellor who proposed the burning of books. He was executed in 208 BC after a power struggle with the eunuch Zhao Gao.
• Chunyu Yue: the scholar from Qi whose call to return to the feudal system prompted the debate.
• Fusu (died 210 BC): the emperor’s eldest son, who protested against the executions.
• Hou Sheng and Lu Sheng: the two masters of esoteric arts whose flight triggered the investigation.

How historians assess the episode

For two thousand years, the phrase fenshu kengru, “burning books and burying Confucian scholars”, stood for the cruelty of the Qin. Modern scholars have looked more critically at the evidence.

The sources are hostile. Nearly everything we know comes from Han dynasty writers. The Han had overthrown the Qin and had every reason to portray it as tyrannical. Some historians argue that Han authors expanded the story over time.

The victims may not have been Confucians. Sima Qian calls those killed in 212 BC zhusheng, a general word for scholars or students, and the investigation began with the flight of two masters of esoteric arts. Some historians think many victims were fangshi rather than Confucian teachers. The specific phrase “burying Confucians” appears only in later texts.

“Buried alive” is uncertain. The verb keng means “pit” and can refer to burying, but it was also used more generally for mass killing. It is not certain that the victims were buried alive, as later tradition claims.

The loss of texts was limited. The imperial library kept copies, and the ban was hard to enforce across a vast empire. Probably the greatest loss came in 206 BC, when the rebel leader Xiang Yu burned the Qin palaces in Xianyang, including official archives.

Historians generally agree, however, that the Qin did try to control learning and punish dissent, and that the policies of 213–212 BC were real and severe.

Consequences and recovery

The Qin dynasty collapsed only a few years later, in 207–206 BC. The new Han dynasty kept many Qin institutions but rejected its reputation for harshness. In 191 BC the Han government repealed the Qin statute against keeping books.

Scholars then worked to recover the classics. A former Qin erudite named Fu Sheng had hidden a copy of the Book of Documents in a wall; after the war he recovered 29 chapters and taught them. Other texts were said to have been found later in the walls of Confucius’ old house in Qufu. Differences between these recovered versions fuelled a long debate between “New Text” and “Old Text” schools of Confucian learning.

Under Emperor Wu of Han (r. 141–87 BC), Confucian learning became the basis of official education, and the Qin persecution became a lesson that later Confucian officials repeated to warn rulers against tyranny.

Archaeology has added another layer. Excavated Qin documents, such as the legal texts on bamboo slips found in a tomb at Shuihudi in Hubei in 1975, show a state that kept detailed written records and expected its officials to master complex laws. The Qin was not hostile to writing as such. What it tried to control was who taught, what they taught and whether learning could be used to challenge the government.

By the numbers

These figures come almost entirely from the Shiji. No independent count survives, and the number of people affected by the book order itself is unknown.

Timeline

• 221 BC: Qin completes the unification of China.
• 213 BC: Court debate at Xianyang; Li Si’s proposal to burn books is approved.
• 212 BC: Two court magicians flee; more than 460 people are executed in Xianyang, and Fusu is sent to the northern frontier.
• 210 BC: Qin Shi Huang dies; Fusu is forced to commit suicide.
• 208 BC: Li Si is executed.
• 206 BC: Xiang Yu burns the Qin palaces in Xianyang.
• 191 BC: The Han dynasty repeals the Qin law against keeping books.

Why it matters

The burning of books and burying of scholars became a lasting symbol of state censorship and the persecution of intellectuals, in China and beyond. It shaped how later Chinese dynasties judged the Qin and justified the central place of Confucian learning in government. It also shows how history is written by successors: the episode was real, but our picture of it was coloured by the Han writers who replaced the Qin.