fayoorite 吐突承璀 T'a-t'u Ch'dng-ts'm was executed, and with him fell the evil Ministers to whom the Emperor had latterly trusted. Canonised as 憲宗皇帝.
1203 Li Ssŭ 李斯 Died B.C. 208. A native of the Ch'a State, who after serving in some petty official post, tamed his back on his native country and in 247 entered the service of Ltl Pa-wei, then at the head of a£Pairs in the Ch4n State. He soon attracted the attention of the sovereign (see Shih Huang TV), and became senior historiographer; and later on, as a reward for valuable political advice, he was appointed Foreign Minister. For many years he seems to have been a trusted counsellor , and in 214 he was raised to the rank of Prime Minister. He was now all-powerful ^ and Iub children intermarried with the Imperial family. In B. C. 213 he suggested the extraordinary plan by which the claims of antiquity were to be for ever blotted out, and history was to begin again with the ruling monarch , thenceforward to be &mous as the First Emperor. All existing literature was to be destroyed, with the exception only of works relating to agriculture, medicine, and divination; and a penalty of branding and four years* work on the Great Wall was enacted against all who refused to surrender their books for destruction. This plan was carried out with considerable vigour. Many valuable works perished; and the Confucian Canon would have been irretrievably lost but for the devotion of scholars, who at considerable risk concealed the tablets by which they set such store, and thus made po^ible the discoveries of the following century and the restoration of the sacred text. At the same time^ as many as four hundred and sixty of the literati were buried alive at Hsien-yang, but this was for treasonable language, and not for retention or concealment of books. In B. C. 210, when the First Emperor died, Li Sstl joined in the conspiracy which placed Hu Hai upon the throne. He afterwards sought to restrain
