Burning of books and burying of scholars

This was an incident of suppression of thought and speech by the First Emperor of Qin in China. In 213 BC, eight years after the First Emperor unified the country, the scholar Chunyu Yue suggested that the children of the First Emperor be feuded according to the ancient system. In response, the Prime Minister Li Si petitioned the throne to prohibit scholars from citing past precedents to criticize current politics. The First Emperor accepted this proposal, and prohibited private citizens from possessing the Book of Songs, the Book of Documents, and books by the Hundred Schools of Thought, except for the Records of Qin (the records of the Qin state's historians) and books on medicine, divination, and seed trees (agriculture), and ordered that they all be burned. The following year, he arrested over 460 Taoist priests and Confucian scholars suspected of criticizing the First Emperor, and sentenced them to be buried in a pit in the capital, Xianyang. This is considered to be the first case of suppression of thought and speech in old China, and the cultural losses caused by the book burning order were particularly great, but the Qin Empire fell apart less than ten years afterwards.

[Yoshihiko Ogura]

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

中国、秦(しん)の始皇帝による思想言論弾圧事件。始皇帝の天下統一から8年後の紀元前213年に、博士淳于越(じゅんうえつ)が古制に従って子弟を封建するよう建議したのに対し、丞相(じょうしょう)の李斯(りし)は、学者たちが昔の先例を引いていまの政治を批判するのを禁止せよと上奏した。始皇帝はその主張をいれて、『秦記』（秦国の史官の記録）および医薬、卜筮(ぼくぜい)、種樹(しゅじゅ)（農業）の書物以外は、『詩経』『書経』や諸子百家の書を民間で所蔵することを禁止し、すべて焼き捨てることを命じた。さらに翌年、始皇帝を批判した疑いのある方士(ほうし)、儒生460人余りを検挙し、都の咸陽(かんよう)で「坑(あなうめ)」の刑に処した。旧中国における第一の思想言論弾圧事件とされるもので、とくに焚書令による文化的損失は大きかったが、その後10年もたたぬうちに秦帝国は滅亡した。

［小倉芳彦］

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