206 by Hsiang Yu, the formidable opponent of the founder of the
House of Han. Then, we are told, the fires blazed for three months
among the palaces and public buildings, and must have proved as
destructive to the copies of the Great Scholars as the edict of the
tyrant had been to the copies among the people.
It is to be noted also that the life of Shih Hwang Ti lasted
only three years after the promulgation of his edict. He died in
B.C. 210, and the reign of his second son who succeeded him
lasted only other three years. A brief period of disorder and
struggling for the supreme authority between different chiefs
ensured; but the reign of the founder of the Han dynasty dates
from B.C. 202. Thus, eleven years were all which intervened
between the order for the burning of the Books and rise of that
family, which signaled itself by the care which it bestowed for
their recovery; and from the edict of the tyrant of Ch'in against
private individuals having copies in their keeping, to its express
abrogation by the emperor Hsiao Hui, there were only twenty-two
years. We may believe, indeed, that vigorous efforts to carry the
edict into effect would not be continued longer than the life of
its author,-- that is, not for more than about three years. The
calamity inflicted upon the ancient Books of China by the House of
Ch'in could not have approached to anything like a complete
destruction of them. There would be no occasion for the scholars
of the Han dynasty, in regard to the bulk of their ancient
literature, to undertake more than the work of recension and
editing.
9. The idea of forgery by them on a large scale is out of the
question. The catalogues of Liang Hsin enumerated more than
13,000 volumes of a larger or smaller size, the productions of
nearly 600 different writers, and arranged in thirty-eight