upwards of 460 scholars had violated the prohibitions, they were
all buried alive in pits [2], 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, Fu-su, 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 him 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 [3]. It is important to
observe that the edict against the Books did not extend to the Yi-
ching, which was

1 ±s¥v±x®×°Ý½Ñ¥Í, ½Ñ¥Í¶Ç¬Û§i¤Þ.
2 ¦Û°£¥Ç¸TªÌ, ¥|¦Ê¤»¾l¤H, ¬Ò¨Â¤§«w¶§. The meaning of this passage as
a whole is sufficiently plain, but I am unable to make out the
force of the phrase ¦Û°£.
3 See the remarks of Chamg Chia-tsi (§¨»Ú¾G¤ó), of the Sung
dynasty, on the subject, in the ¤åÄm³q¦Ò, 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. There ought to have been no difficulty in finding copies
when the Han dynasty superseded that of the Ch'in, and probably
there would have been none but for the sack of the capital in B.C.