After the unification of the country and mountains, in order to increase the legitimacy of the Qin unification and control the people's thinking, he ordered the burning of ideological works other than the "Record of Qin". At that time, whether it was the poetry books collected by ordinary people or the works of the hundred families of the sons, they were destroyed overnight.
Recently, I heard a saying that Yin Zheng burned the world's books except qin canon.
The author believes that this statement is flawed. With Wen Tao's martial strategy, he must have understood the principle of "knowing oneself and knowing the other", so he could not burn all the books in the world, but only selectively burned the books that hindered Qin unification.
We know that ancient books from the pre-Qin period were usually engraved on bamboo strips, and such books are extremely difficult to reproduce. In other words, many orphan ancient books will be lost to the world if they are burned.
Therefore, Before Yingzheng burned the books, he must have undergone careful consideration. Finally, after careful screening, he selected some ideological works that hindered Great Qin's rule and burned them.
In addition to that, there is one more detail we need to pay attention to. When Ying Zheng decided to burn the book, the minister Li Si made a suggestion, which read as follows:
"The minister asked the historian to burn all the non-Qin records." Those who are not doctoral officials, those who dare to hide "poems", "books", and hundreds of languages in the world, such as Xi Yi Shou and Wei Miscellaneous, are burned. Those who dare to speak "poems" and "books" abandon the city. The ancient and non-modern people. Those who do not know are guilty of the same sin as those who do not do so. Order the next thirty days not to burn, the tuo for the city. Those who do not go, medicine, rafting, and the book of planting trees. If you want to learn the law, take the official as your teacher. ”
It can be seen from here that the original intention of Winning the Government was to prevent the people from talking about political affairs in vain. In later dynasties, similar events occurred.
What is the purpose of the ruler?
Control the minds of the people, but not close them. To put it bluntly, it is just to induce the people to obey the rule of the dynasty.
In this passage, there are four words that are more critical, "the ancient is not the present." Judging from the history of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, the various princely states have quite a criticism of the politics of the Qin state, so they have all smeared the Qin state in the historical materials of the various countries.
Yin Zheng believes that if the people read this knowledge, the back of their brains will grow back. In order to put an end to this phenomenon, Yingzheng simply "one size fits all" and stipulated that the "Record of Qin" is a correct history, and the historical materials of other countries are all fallacies.
For example, technical books such as agriculture, medical treatment, and divination (divination was also a technology at that time) were not among the list of burns. As for the books on laws and ordinances, although they were burned, ordinary people who wanted to obtain relevant knowledge could consult local officials.
Moreover, winning the government's burning of books does not mean that all books are burned down. Even if it is a banned book, there is a backup. Just as the so-called "knowledge is power", although there was no Bacon famous saying in the Qin Dynasty, this truth was definitely known to the wise and divine martial artist.
So, where are these surviving "forbidden books" collected? Where did they go after the fall of the Qin Dynasty?
According to the situation at that time, the only place where these ancient books could be collected was probably the qin palace, the old nest of Yingzheng. After Xiang Yu entered Guanzhong, the first thing he did was to seize the treasure and burn the palace. In this fire, it is estimated that these precious books were also turned into fly ash and made funerary items for the Great Qin Dynasty.
In Liu Dakui's "Debate on Book Burning" of the Qing Dynasty, this understanding man finally exonerated Yingzheng. In this article, Mr. Liu pointed out that the burning of books had nothing to do with Yingzheng Lisi, and the fault was all in Xiang Yu. Secondly, in the "Records of History", Mr. Sima Qian also said that Xiang Yu was also at fault in the matter of burning books.
Admittedly, in fact, Qin Shi Huang's behavior was at best a "forbidden book", but Xiang Yu was really a fire that burned all those remaining orphan books.
Later generations generally believed that the burning of books by The Government of Yingzheng had harmed for thousands of years and destroyed countless spiritual treasures. So, is this really the case?
In fact, before Yingzheng, many princes had done similar things, which was even worse than Yingzheng's book burning.
As the world knows, the Zhou rites were abolished during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, so how was the Zhou Rites abolished?
Historical records say: "The princes of the Spring and Autumn Warring States served evil zhou and harmed themselves, and all went to the classics." It can be seen from this that when the princes of various countries changed from "hou" to "king", they all did such a lack of virtue as destroying books.
In fact, even if these bamboo janes are not burned, it is unlikely that they can be preserved in modern times, because the ancient preservation technology is relatively backward, and there is no technology to protect these bamboo janes.
For example, the YiwenZhi contains more than 600 ancient books. However, only one hundred and fifty of these six hundred ancient books now exist, and most of them are incomplete. The lost ancient books were not artificially destroyed, but were worn out because they could not be preserved.
To be fair, in terms of the protection of ancient books, Yingzheng has done a good job. At least after he banned the "reactionary banned books" like other princes, he made a replica of these "forbidden books" and preserved them in the imperial palace.
To this day, little is known about the preservation of orphaned ancient books by Yingzheng. Poor old lady, who has been carrying the black cauldron for so many years.
Resources:
【Qin Ji", "Yiwen Zhi", "Book Burning Debate"】