The burning of books and Confucianism occurred in the Qin Dynasty in ancient China. In the thirty-fourth year of Emperor Qin Shihuang (213 BC), Dr. Qi Ren Chunyuyue opposed the "system of prefectures and counties" implemented at that time and demanded that the children be divided according to the ancient system. Prime Minister Li Si refuted it and advocated forbidding the people to slander the government with private knowledge. Qin Shihuang adopted Li Si’s suggestion and ordered the burning of historical records of other countries other than "Qin Ji", and the private collections of "Poems" and "Books" that were not part of the doctor's hall were also handed over and burned within a time limit; some who dared to talk about "Poems" and "Books" Execution is based on the annihilation of the clan in ancient times; private education is forbidden, and those who want to learn the law must use officials as their teachers. This is called "book burning". In the second year, the two sorcerers (practitioners of alchemy) Hou Sheng and Lu Sheng secretly slandered Qin Shihuang and went away desperately. When Qin Shihuang learned of this, he was furious and sent a censor to investigate. After the trial, more than 460 people were banned, all of which were killed at the "Burning Book Keng" and "Kengru Valley" sites. This is called "pitting Confucianism". The two things combined "burning books and pitting scholars."
Burning Books and Confucianism
Burning books and pitting Confucianism are two major measures taken by Qin Shihuang to rule the ideology and culture after the unification of the six countries. In the Warring States Period, when the vassals were ruled and ruled, the system was chaotic and mixed.
Xu Shen's "Shuowen Jiezi Preface" stated that at that time, "Tian Chou was different, the east was painted differently, the laws were different, the clothes were different, the speech was different, and the characters were different." After Qin unified, various measures were taken to consolidate politically and economically. Unite. However, the mere implementation of political and economic unity is far from enough to consolidate the first huge feudal autocratic empire in Chinese history, and ideological unity must be implemented. This measure strengthened the feudal despotism and centralized rule and brought the first major disaster to the history of Chinese thought and culture.
The disputes between the lords during the Warring States Period caused great economic devastation, but the ideology and culture were unprecedentedly active, and various ideological schools and academic groups were popular in the world. In terms of schools alone, there are so-called "nine streams and ten schools" such as Confucianism, Legalism, Taoism, Mohism, famous schools, Yin and Yang schools, political strategists, military strategists, peasants, and miscellaneous schools. Mutual criticisms formed the only controversy among a hundred schools of thought in Chinese history, which greatly promoted the prosperity of academic thought and ushered in the golden age of academic development in ancient my country. However, with the unification of the feudal country, authoritarian centralization became the form of political rule of the society at that time. The arrogant emperor Qin Shihuang strengthened his political and economic authoritarian power while also beginning to promote cultural and ideological power. Despotism ruled. However, he was not prepared to take cruel measures in the field of culture and thought from the beginning. From the establishment of a unified government in the 26th year of the first emperor (221 BC) to the 34th year of the implementation of the book burning (213 BC) In the past 8 years, a large number of classical documents have been collected from the courts and folks of the six countries. At the same time, more than 70 veteran scholars were recruited and appointed as doctoral officials. More than 2,000 students were also summoned to be placed under the doctoral officer, and the life is called all the students. The purpose is to use them to clean up and screen classical culture, use the power of democracy to ban books that are not conducive to the feudal autocratic regime, and to reward those that are beneficial to the Qin regime. As Qin Shihuang himself said: "I received the world's books before, and those who did not use them should be eliminated. I learned that there are many literary alchemists, and I want to rejuvenate peace." Therefore, the Qin regime not only gave 70 doctors a gift, And for all living beings, "respect and bestow a lot."
However, the development of the matter did not proceed according to Qin Shihuang's original plan. These doctors and other students were all scholars of the old age, and they were full of old culture and retro thinking. They believed that the Confucianism of returning to the ancient Zhou Dynasty was good. Therefore, not only did they not help to strengthen the ideology of authoritarian rule, but on the contrary, they made irresponsible remarks about what Qin Shihuang did. And Qin Shihuang was precisely a person who despised Confucianism and admired legalism. He admired the idea of Han Fei, the master of legalism: "The kingdom of the master of the Ming has no scriptures, and the law is the teaching; there is no language of the king, and the official is Teacher." I think this is the only magic way to prosper the country and strengthen the army and surpass the three emperors and five emperors, so I am dissatisfied with the performance of the doctoral students. In the thirty-fourth year of the first emperor (213 years ago), at a banquet in the Xianyang Palace, Dr. Chunyuyue proposed to abolish the counties and establish sub-feuds. He believed that "the emperor does not learn from the past but can last forever." Ordering the officials to discuss, the Prime Minister Li Si said absurdly, his words, and the emperor said: In the past, the world was scattered, and there was no one who could be unified. To be good at the private school is established by the above. Today, your Majesty does not have a world, and it is a system of mutual and illegal teaching. The private school is a system of mutual and illegal teaching. When you hear the order, you will use your private school to discuss it. The alley talks, the non-owner thinks the name, the different interest thinks it is high, and the rate of the group is to create slander.
If this is so uncontrollable, the main momentum will drop to the top, and the party will become inconvenient. "Li Si's analysis of the interests made the first emperor highly praised and approved Li Si's proposal to burn the book, that is, in addition to the history books of the Qin country, other history books, "Poems", "Books", and so on. The suggestion to burn them all. Except for the books in charge of doctoral officials, agricultural books, medical books, and books for asking God, all books in all regions should be handed over to the local government for burning. Those who do not burn within 30 days after the order is issued will be sentenced to hard labor. Order In the future, if anyone dared to discuss poems and sentenced to death. Those who were old and not the present were put to death. Officials who knew but did not expose were punished with the same crime. One of Li Si’s suggestions made the Qin Empire’s rule ablaze everywhere. In less than 30 days after the fire of books, all the classical documents before the Qin Dynasty were reduced to ashes, and ancient Chinese ideology and culture were destroyed as never before. This is the famous "book burning" incident in history.
Only one year after Qin Shihuang took the stupid book-burning measures, the tragedy of "pitting Confucianism" happened again. Qin Shihuang knew that although books were burned, people's thoughts could not be burned. In his own political institutions, there were some old nobles with retro thinking in charge of cultural undertakings, and these people must be eliminated. But on what excuse?
Qin Shihuang is a man with several personalities, that is, he has the courage to go into battle and command thousands of troops to swallow the six kingdoms, and he has the cowardly mentality of superstitious gods, greedy for life and fear of death. When he unified China and became the first emperor in history, he became fascinated by the magic of immortals, reusing alchemists, refining alchemy and seeking medicine, and at the expense of huge sums of money, he sent people to the deep seas and mountains to find the medicine for immortality. In the thirty-five years of Qin Shihuang (212 years ago), there were two alchemists Hou Sheng and Lu Sheng who sought the elixir of immortality for him. Knowing that there was no immortal medicine, they were nothing more than swindling wealth.
It has been a long time, fearing that the scam will eventually be exposed, but he said: "The first emperor is a man, with a strong nature for his own use, he has become a prince, and the world, and he has a desire to follow him. Although there are seventy doctors, special personnel are useful. The prime ministers and ministers are all subject to success and rely on them. Shangle uses torture as its prestige, and the world is afraid of crimes and loyalty. Don't dare to be loyal, ... everything in the world is determined regardless of size. On the above,... I am so greedy for power and power, I cannot ask for immortal medicine. So I perish." When the first emperor heard the news, Long Yan was furious, and accused the alchemist, "Han Zhong waited and didn't report it, Xu Xin waited. I have spent a lot of money, and I will not be able to take medicine. I will use it for profit to tell the news. Lu Sheng and others have given me a lot of money. Today I slander me because I am not ethical. Those who live in Xianyang, I make people honest. , Or to chaos the head of Guizhou as a demon." "So he made the Yushi learn the case and ask the living beings, and the living beings turned to tell each other, and he eliminated more than 460 people who had violated the ban, and they were all pits in Xianyang." After discipline. This is the so-called "pit Confucianism" incident in history. The confucianism incident was not the only one, after that, the second and third massacres occurred one after another. The "Document General Test·School Test" says: "Shihuang" once again ordered the winter to plant Gua Lishan, the real life, and the order of the doctoral students to regard it as an opportunity to kill more than 700 people. During the second reign of Qin, Chen Shengqi, Summoning doctors and family planning discussions, sitting with dozens of people who are not suitable for speaking. However, Qin’s disciples of doctors can’t examine and test them, lest they will not be exhausted."
Qin Shihuang adopted extremely barbarous methods to "burn books" and "pit Confucianism", hoping to achieve a high degree of ideological unity with this cruel method, which fully reflects the cruelty of the feudal landlord class dictatorship and the emperor's supreme power. The burning of books destroyed the cultural prosperity formed by the contention of a hundred schools of thought since the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, and caused disaster to the motherland's cultural treasure house. Pit Confucianism hit the Confucian school and the vast number of intellectuals severely, and made legalism completely official. The Qin Dynasty led to its quick death because of the harsh theories of the Lone Legalists.
Created China's "Great Unification" pattern
"Burning books and pitting Confucian scholars" has always been evidence of Qin Shihuang's cruelty and brutality. It has been scolded by scholars in the world for more than two thousand years, so that when some people think of this historical event, they are still brooding and wanting to dig the grave and whip the corpse. I wish I could penetrate more than two thousand years of time and space, and smash the bones of Qin Shihuang. This kind of hatred is actually the collective fear in the subconscious minds of later literati, which has been passed down from generation to generation. Emotionally speaking, the old monk also felt that Qin Shihuang's method of burning books and confessing Confucianism was too fierce, and it was indeed too cruel to the Confucian scholars at the time, and he could take some more moderating methods. However, if you want to evaluate a historical event, it is best to evaluate it from the effects of the event, rather than using moral or emotional standards. So what is the historical effect of burning books and pitting Confucians? I think that after passing this incident, a unified historical structure of the Chinese nation was created.
Let’s first look at the essence of "burning books to confuse Confucianism". The essence of "burning books and confucianism" is actually a movement to unify ideas. After Qin Shihuang unified the six countries, in the political structure, the enfeoffment system was abolished, and the system of prefectures and counties was implemented nationwide; culturally, the script was unified, with Xiaozhuan as the standard official script; in the economic field, it was unified. Currency, unified weights and measures. These measures are the basic elements of the unification of the country and the elements that can be controlled by the country's strong violence. But some things are difficult to control by the country’s strong structure, especially in the early years of the Qin Dynasty, just after the Warring States period, hundreds of schools are still in contention, the ideological field is extremely chaotic, and the degree to which a country can be unified is the most important condition. It is the extent to which common values can be formed, and ideological confusion is the enemy of the formation of common values. Therefore, it is not enough to have unified measures in politics, economy, and culture. The most critical and long-term unification factor is the unification of ideas, and the formation of a unified core value concept can make unified measures in the fields of politics, economy, and culture. effective. At that time, the two biggest ideological trends were Confucianism and Legalism. Confucianism respected the ancients, and the unification of China by Qin Shihuang was a new matter. The measures he took were also new measures. These things were not in line with Confucian ideals. At that time, the nobles of the six countries also tried to restore the enfeoffment system of the Zhou Dynasty through the Confucian "self-denial and restoration of rituals", thus gaining the lost power.
Therefore, for the newly unified Qin Dynasty, unifying thinking is the key measure to maintain the great unification. Therefore, after Qin Shihuang found a few Confucian scholars, a cultural movement to unify ideas began. The methods were a little bit fierce, but the objective results were obvious. Although the unified Qin Dynasty only lasted more than ten years, all rulers after the Qin Dynasty regarded unified thinking as a key means to maintain their rule. When Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty ousted a hundred schools, he only respected Confucianism and the thought of Chinese unification. Formally formed. After that, all rulers basically regarded Confucianism as the core idea of the country. It needs to be pointed out here that the essence of the Qin dynasty's "pitting Confucianism" and the Han dynasty's "respecting Confucianism" are the same, and they all want to unify their thinking. In fact, since the Han dynasty, all feudal rulers have basically practiced the "yang Confucian yin method", or "real law named Confucianism", which on the surface adopts Confucian views, but in fact they are legalists. means. The emperor ruled the world with legalist methods, and used Confucian doctrines to teach the people. Legalism emphasized power, skill, and power. The ancients regarded these things as imperial skills as a way to control the people and officials; while Confucianism mainly emphasized benevolence and etiquette. The greatest benefit of benevolence and etiquette is to form moral consciousness of behavior. Instead of taking violent measures, it is a good tool to maintain the hierarchical system, so the rulers of the past dynasties have used Confucianism to teach the world. At that time, Qin Shihuang did not realize that Confucianism could be used, so he took drastic measures. The method of burning books and confucianists is stupid and cruel. It destroyed many ancient classics and caused irreparable losses in cultural history.
