Scholars, amounting to seventy men, appeared and wished him long life.25 One of the principal ministers, Chow Ts'ing-shin,26 came forward and said, 'Formerly, the State of Ts'in was only 1,000 le in extent, but Your Majesty, by your spirit-like efficacy and intelligent wisdom, has tranquillized and settled the whole empire, and driven away all barbarous tribes, so that, wherever the sun and moon shine, all appear before you as guests acknowledging subjection. You have formed the States of the various princes into provinces and districts, where the people enjoy a happy tranquillity, suffering no more from the calamities of war and contention. This condition of things will be transmitted for 10,000 generations. From the highest antiquity there has been no one in awful virtue like Your Majesty.'

"The Emperor was pleased with this flattery, when Shun Yuyue,27 one of the great scholars, a native of Ts'e, advanced and said, 'The sovereigns of Yin and Chow, for more than a thousand years, invested their sons and younger brothers, and meritorious ministers, with domains and rule, and could thus depend upon them for support and aid;—that I have heard. But now Your Majesty is in possession of all within the seas, and your sons and younger brothers are nothing but private individuals. The issue will be that some one will arise to play the part of T'een Chang, 28 or of the six nobles of Tsin. Without the support of your own family, where will you find the aid which you may require? That a state of things not modelled from the lessons of antiquity can long continue;-that is what I have not heard. Tsing is now showing himself to be a flatterer, who increases the errors of Your Majesty, and not a loyal minister.' "The Emperor requested the opinions of others on this representation, when the premier, Le Sze, 29 said, 'The five emperors were not one the double of the other, nor did the three dynasties accept one another's ways. Each had a peculiar system of government, not for the sake of the contrariety, but as being required by the changed times. Now, Your Majesty has laid the foundations of imperial sway, so that it will last for 10,000 generations. This is

25 博士七十人前為壽 The博士 were not only great scholars,' but had

an official rank. There was what we may call a college of them, consisting of seventy members.

26 僕射周靑臣 27 淳于越 28 田常一常 should probably be恆

it is given in the Tung Keen. 29.

as

indeed beyond what a stupid scholar can understand. And, moreover, Yuě only talks of things belonging to the Three Dynasties, which are not fit to be models to you. At other times, when the princes were all striving together, they endeavoured to gather the wandering scholars about them; but now, the empire is in a stable condition, and laws and ordinances issue from one supreme authority. Let those of the people who abide in their homes give their strength to the toils of husbandry, and those who become scholars should study the various laws and prohibitions. Instead of doing this, however, the scholars do not learn what belongs to the present day, but study antiquity. They go on to condemn the present time, leading the masses of the people astray, and to disorder.

"At the risk of my life, I, the prime minister, say,-Formerly, when the empire was disunited and disturbed, there was no one who could give unity to it. The princes therefore stood up together; constant references were made to antiquity to the injury of the present state; baseless statements were dressed up to confound what was real, and men made a boast of their own peculiar learning to condemn what their rulers appointed. And now, when Your Majesty has consolidated the empire, and, distinguishing black from white, has constituted it a stable unity, they still honour their peculiar learning, and combine together; they teach men what is contrary to your laws. laws. When they hear that an ordinance has been issued, every one sets to discussing it with his learning. In the court, they are dissatisfied in heart; out of it, they keep talking in the streets. While they make a pretence of vaunting their Master, they consider it fine to have extraordinary views of their own. And so they lead on the people to be guilty of murmuring and evil speaking. If these things are not prohibited, Your Majesty's authority will decline, and parties will be formed. The best way is to prohibit them. I pray that all the Records in charge of the Historiographers be burned, excepting those of Ts'in; that, with the exception of those officers belonging to the Board of Great Scholars, all throughout the empire who presume to keep copies of the Sheking, or of the Shoo-king, or of the books of the Hundred Schools, be required to go with them to the officers in charge of the several districts, and burn them; 30 that all who may dare to speak together 30 悉詣守尉雜燒之

about the She and the Shoo be put to death, and their bodies exposed in the market place; that those who make mention of the past, so as to blame the present, be put to death along with their relatives; that officers who shall know of the violation of those rules and not inform against the offenders, be held equally guilty with them; and that whoever shall not have burned their Books within thirty days after the issuing of the ordinance, be branded and sent to labour on the wall for four years. The only Books which should be spared are those on medicine, divination, and husbandry. Whoever wants to learn the laws may go to the magistrates and learn of them.' "The imperial decision was-Approved.'"

The destruction of the scholars is related more briefly. In the year after the burning of the Books, the resentment of the emperor was excited by the remarks and flight of two scholars who had been favourites with him, and he determined to institute a strict inquiry about all of their class in Heen-yang, to find out whether they had been making ominous speeches about him, and disturbing the minds of the people. The investigation was committed to the Censors,31 and it being discovered that upwards of 460 scholars had violated the prohibitions, they were all buried alive in pits, 32 for a warning to the empire, while degradation and banishment were employed more strictly than before against all who fell under suspicion. The emperor's eldest son, Foo-soo, remonstrated with him, saying that such measures against those who repeated the words of Confucius and sought to imitate him, would alienate all the people from their infant dynasty, but his interference offended his father so much that he was sent off from court, to be with the general who was superintending the building of the great wall.

8. No attempts have been made by Chinese critics and historians to discredit the record of these events, though some have questioned the extent of the injury inflicted by them on the monuments of their ancient literature. It is important to observe that the edict against the Books did not extend to the Yih-king, which was

31 御史悉案問諸生,諸生傳相告引 32 自除犯禁者 四百六十餘人,皆阬之咸陽.The meaning of this passage as a whole is

sufficiently plain, but I am unable to make out the force of the phrase 33 See the remarks of Ching Kää-tse (X), of the Sung dynasty, on the subject, in the , Bk. clxxiv. p. 5.

exempted as being a work on divination, nor did it extend to the other classics which were in charge of the Board of Great Scholars. It is still more important to note that the burning took place only three years before the death of the tyrant who commanded it. He died B.C. 209, and the feeble reign of his second son, who succeeded him, lasted only three years. A brief season of disorder and struggling between different chiefs for the supreme authority ensued, but the reign of the founder of the Han dynasty dates from B.C. 201. Thus, eleven years were all which intervened between the order for the burning of the Books and the rise of that family, which signalized itself by the care which it bestowed for their recovery; and from the edict of the tyrant of Ts'in against private individuals having copies in their keeping, to its express abrogation by the emperor Heaou Hwuy, there were only 22 years. We may believe, indeed, that vigorous efforts to carry the edict into effect would not be continued longer than the life of its author,-that is, not for more than about three years. The calamity inflicted on the ancient Books of China by the House of Ts'in could not have approached to anything like a complete destruction of them. There would be no occasion for the scholars of the Han dynasty, in regard to the bulk of their ancient literature, to undertake more than the work of recension and editing.

35

9. The idea of forgery by them on a large scale is out of the question. The catalogues of Leang Hin enumerated more than 13,000 volumes of a larger or smaller size, the productions of nearly 600 different writers, and arranged in 38 subdivisions of subjects.34 In the third catalogue, the first subdivision contained the orthodox writers, to the number of 53, with 836 Works or portions of their Works. Between Mencius and K'ung Keih, the grandson of Confucius, eight different authors have place. The second subdivision contained the Works of the Taouist school,36 amounting to 993 collections, from 37 different authors. The sixth subdivision contained the Mihist writers, 37 to the number of 6, with their productions. in 86 collections. I specify these two subdivisions, because they embraced the Works of schools or sects antagonist to that of Confucius, and some of them still hold a place in Chinese literature,

34 凡書六略 三十八種五百九十六家萬三千二百 六十九卷 3*儒家者流 *道家者流 墨家者流

and contain many references to the five Classics, and to Confucius and his disciples.

10. The inquiry pursued in the above paragraphs conducts us to the conclusion that the materials from which the Classics, as they have come down to us, were compiled and edited in the two centuries preceding our Christian era, were genuine remains, going back to a still more remote period. The injury which they sustained from the dynasty of Ts'in was, I believe, the same in character as that to which they were exposed, during all the time of "the Warring States." It may have been more intense in degree, but the constant warfare which prevailed for some centuries among the different States which composed the empire was eminently unfavourable to the cultivation of literature. Mencius tells us how the princes had made away with many of the records of antiquity, from which their own usurpations and innovations might have been condemned.38 Still the times were not unfruitful, either in scholars or statesmen, to whom the ways and monuments of antiquity were dear, and the space from the rise of the Ts'in dynasty to Confucius was not very great. It only amounted to 258 years. Between these two periods Mencius stands as a connecting link. Born probably in the year B.C. 371, he reached, by the intervention of K'ung Keih, back to the sage himself, and as his death happened B.C. 288, we are brought down to within nearly half a century of the Ts'in dynasty. From all these considerations we may proceed with confidence to consider each separate Work, believing that we have in these Classics and Books what the great sage of China and his disciples gave to their country more than 2,000 years ago.

38. See Mencius, V. Pt. II. ii. 2.