Ancient History Glossary Emperor Chin

Definition: Emperor Chin shih huang-ti was the first Chin (Qin) Dynasty emperor for which reason people call him simply the First Emperor. Appraisals of this 3rd century B.C. emperor vary. Some consider his government unprincipled, and him, a violent, superstitious ruler who ordered a bibliocaust. He condemned Confucianism and other schools of thought, save Legalism, which supported his imperial position. They say he buried alive Confucian scholars and artisans working on his funeral complex. Others praise him as a peace-bringing political and legal unifier, who built roads to handle the standard distance between carriage wheels, and started the Great Wall; a reformer, who standardized coinage, weights and measures, and the written language. Like the early Egyptian pharaohs, the first Chinese emperor expended prodigious resources provisioning the afterlife, including a subterranean palace and an enormous terra cotta army complete with life size, realistic, painted warriors, chariots and horses. Even the treadmarking on shoe bottoms was fastidiously individualized. A docent at the 2012 exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Chinas Terracotta Warriors - The First Emperors Legacy) says the warriors are about six feet tall, which might seem tall as an average for the modern Chinese male, but is considered to be life size for these descendants of Steppe denizens. [See: What Armor Did the Qin Dynasty Warriors Wear?] Reign Originally called Ying Zheng, Emperor Chin was born in 260 B.C. and died in 210. His reign as king of the more than 500-year old state of Qin had started when he was only 13. Having unified the warring states, Chin became emperor of a unified China in 221 B.C. His rule as emperor had lasted for 12 years when he died at the age of 49. When he died, his body was covered by fish to disguise the odor and to delay news until his body arrived back home -- according to legend. Rebellion followed soon after. Weak successors followed, so his dynasty lasted only another three years. Warring States Emperor Chin put an end to the Warring States period in ancient Chinese history, which ran from about 475-221 B.C. It was a period of violence and chaos during which the philosopher Sun-Tzu -- called the author of The Art of War -- is said to have lived. Culture flourished. There were seven states of China during the Warring States period (Chin Qi Chu Yan, Han, Zhao, and Wei). Two of these states, the Chin and Chu (which had, incidentally, incorporated Confucius home state of Lu, in 249), came to dominate, and in 223, the Chin defeated the Chu, establishing the first unified Chinese state two years later, in the 26th year of King Chengs reign. (As first emperor of all China, King Cheng became known as Emperor Chin.) Historical and Archaeological Sources on Emperor Chin In 213 B.C., three years before Emperor Chin died, Chin ordered a book burning (bibliocaust) that was to destroy much of the historical record of earlier periods. Chin documents were probably destroyed in a palace complex-burning, by Hsiang Yu, in 208, two years after the first emperors death. Archaeological remains of the tomb of the first emperor, including the famous terra cotta army of more than 7000 men, and legal documents were found in the 1970s when farmers dug up unexpected quantities of pottery. Another source of information on Emperor Chin is the Shih chi (Historical Records), written by Han dynasty historian Ssu-ma Chien in around 100 B.C. This same historian and storyteller, also called Sima Qian, wrote a biography of the sage Confucius (Kongzi) Periods of Ancient China Also Known As: Chin shih huang-ti, Qin or Qin Shihuangdi, Cheng Alternate Spellings: Chin Shih Huang, Qin Shi Huangdi, Qin Shih Huang-ti, Qin Shihuang Examples: Chairman Mao, the famous leader of the Communist Party in China, who was in power when farmers unearthed the artifacts of the Emperor Chin in 1974, is credited with the following words or sentiments: What can Emperor Qin Shi Huang brag about? He only killed 460 Confucian scholars, but we killed 46,000 intellectuals. In our suppression of counter-revolutionaries, didnt we kill some counter-revolutionary intellectuals as well? I argued with the pro-democratic people who accused us of acting like Emperor Qin Shi Huang. I said they were wrong. We surpassed him by a hundred times.The Epoch Times Commentaries on the Communist Party References: New Scientist Nov 16, 1978Imperial Rulership and Cultural Change in Traditional China, by Frederick Paul Brandauer, Junjie Huang; (1994).Encyclopedia BritannicaThe Oxford Companion to Military History.Minneapolis Institute of Arts: Chinas Terracotta Warriors - The First Emperors LegacyChinese History (Mark Bender at Ohio State University) Go to Other Ancient / Classical History Glossary pages beginning with the letter a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | wxyz