Whatever truth there may be in this statement, there is very little doubt that the reign of Ts’in Chi Hoang was one of bloodshed, war, and suffering and that with the end of the Chou (or Chow), dynasty, and the accession of the Prince Ts’in, first as the dominating King and then as Emperor of China, there was much suffering.
“It was a time of extreme severity,” says the historian Tsse Ma Thsien, “and all affairs were decided according to the law without either grace or charity.”[82]
In addition to his bloodthirsty qualities, the Prince Ts’in, who was known as the Great First Emperor and who insisted that all successors should be known as the Second, Third, and Fourth Emperors, was superbly egotistic. Everything, including literature, was ordained to begin from his reign, to which end he issued an edict that all books should be burned. He put to death so many hundred of the literati who refused to obey this edict that the “melons actually grew in winter on the spot beneath which the bodies were buried”[83]—a tribute to the fertile character of the Chinese literati.
Even assuming that the ill-treatment of children as we know it today did not extend farther back than the period ascribed to it by the Catholic missionaries, the period of Ts’in Chi Hoang, the earliest records of the Chinese indicate that the family was placed on a plane that, for severity toward children, challenges even the Roman patria potestas. To the Emperor Yao or Yau, who is supposed to have reigned about 2300 years before Christ, is ascribed the first step in establishing the Chinese attitude toward parents and the respectful obedience exacted from children. Particular emphasis was laid on the son’s obedience. It was apparently taken for granted that a daughter would not be rebellious.
Having occupied the throne a long time, Yao, as it is said, called his ministers about him and, telling them that he had now reigned for more than seventy years, expressed his willingness to abdicate in favour of any one who felt capable of taking the Emperor’s place. When no one volunteered—they were wise Chinese—he asked them to suggest someone who was deserving of charity.
“Yu Chun,” answered the ministers, “though an aged man, is without a wife and comes from an obscure family. Though his father was blind and of neither talent nor mind, and his mother a wicked woman by whom he was mistreated, and though his brother Siang is full of pride, he has observed the rules of filial obedience and has lived in peace and has gradually improved the condition of his family.”
“Then,” replied the Emperor, “I shall give him my two daughters in marriage and he shall succeed me on the throne to the exclusion of my son, Ly, who has shown himself to be unworthy by his lack of respect for his parents.”
And it was this Yu Chun, it is said, who further established the Chinese principles of morality, by which the family and not the individual shaped the progress of the nation.
How well established those principles became may be seen from the Li Ki, which was composed about a thousand years later. This is a code or book of ceremonials on the civil life, composed or put together by or under the patronage of Tscheou Kong, uncle of the Emperor Tchin Ouang, in 1145 B. C.