This week I visited TROVE. Trove is a new free search service based on Libraries Australia. It did not reveal much that was relevant to my blog topic, or that I found new and useful. However, it did return two of the books from my reference list above, when I searched under Book Burning, which affirmed my choice of them as references in the first place. I also went to Wikipedia pages, which I located not through Google, but through the American Library Association's (ALA) webpages. Again, I did not find any new information on them, that I had not already come across in the books. Nevertheless, the page that had information on the burying of scholars and burning of books in Ancient China is listed below as a reference.
Burying of Confucian scholars For this week I am concentrating on these two books, as their content is so rich and relevant. Here is some of the information that I have found:
When you think about it, book burning is actually as old as books themselves, but ironically books, apparently, are very difficult to burn. Not only that, but they have a very strange habit of surviving. Matthew Fishburn, the authour of Book Burning, states that in his book The Book-Hunter,(1862),John Hill Burton wrote that books were burnt on large wooden stages and in spite of considerable effort, large readable masses were found in the embers. In the end, he says, it was found easier to burn the heretics themselves, than the books they wrote.
The Chinese Emporer burying the scholars.
Links to this page.
Whilst books (tablets, bamboo sheets, papyrus etc.) and record keeping materials relevant to the time were so often destroyed or smashed as rulers, kings and dynasties were conquered, the first record of a book burning that was sponsored by the state is attributed to Zhao Zheng, who became the leader of Qin in 246 BC. He later proclaimed himself to be emperor Shi Huangdi (First Emperor), a title which he felt gave testimony to his majesty. He then became known as Qin Shi Huang - first emperor of the state of Qin.
As an emperor, Qin Shi Huang was reputedly tyrannical and had absolute power, bribing,destroying and/or murdering anyone who opposed him. By his side was his faithful advisor Grand Councillor Li Si, who proposed that all historians records, other than those of their own state of Qin, be burnt. Consequently, in 213 BC, Qin Shi Huang approved the burning of all books with the exception of those on the topics of agriculture, medicine, forestry and prophecy. Funnily enough, the Emperor hid treatises on, meditation, shamanism and alchemy and protected writings on divination. Chinese books in this era were made from strips of bamboo and wood and in 2000, archaeologists in Hunan province unearthed 20,000 bamboo strips with ideograms on them revealing the history of Qin Shi Huang to the modern day world. Therefore, we now know that those who failed to burn their books after thirty days notice, or failed to deliver them to the emperors representatives to be burnt were sent to build the Great Wall of China, the construction of which this ruler is known to have begun.
As all the scholars respected Confucius, Qin Shi Huang had his works burnt as well, and sent men from house to house seizing and later burning mnay books at a bonfire. Famously, he also had around 460 scholars buried alive with their books at Xianyang, and their families suffered 'countless humiliations'. The Emporer created his own Imperial library which burnt to the ground in the civil wars to over throw his heirs that took place after his death.
REFERENCE LIST:
BOOKS:
Baez, F 2008, A Universal history of the destruction of books: from ancient Sumer to modern Iraq, Atlas & Co, New York.
Fishburn, M 2008, Burning books, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Battles, M 2003, Library: An unquiet history, W.W. Norton, New York.
WEBPAGE:
2010, Book burning, free online encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation Inc, viewed April 2 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_books_and_burying_of_scholars
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