king of qin

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The First Emperor ± Qin Shihuangdi

Qin Shihuangdi was originally named Ying Zheng. He became King of Qin as a

boy of thirteen and from 221BC, after conquering and uniting the surrounding

regions, he pronounced himself "First August and Divine Emperor: 'Emperor' to

separate himself from his ancestors who were merely kings and dukes, 'August andDivine' to show that he was equal to god. The word 'China' is derived from 'Qin'.

Qin Shihuangdi is remembered for several things. He ruled with ruthless barbarity

unifying the numerous warring tribes of the region and transforming China into a

powerful political entity. He also simplified and encouraged trade by standardising

both the monetary system and the weights and measures system. He ruled that one

single script must be used nationwide. He was obsessed with control, precision and

uniformity and even ruled that the axle widths of all carts must be the same so that

the carts would fit easily into ruts on the roads that he built.

The Discovery of the Terracotta Army

The Terracotta Army was discovered in 1974 and forms part of a massive

archaeological site that includes Qin Shihuangdi's tomb and four large pits

covering a total area of approximately sixty square kilometres. The warriors were

there to defend the tomb. The tomb itself, occupying some 400 square metres is

still sealed.

The warriors were discovered in three of the pits covering an area of approximately

25,000 square metres. One pit contains the main army. Infantry and cavalry occupy

the second pit and the command post is located in the third pit. A fourth pit wasdiscovered empty, presumably left incomplete on the death of Qin Shihuangdi.

There are at least 7000 terracotta soldiers and 1000 have been preserved. Every

soldier had individual features and his own personality. Most of the original

pigments have disappeared and some individual features are worn but still the

details are incredible. You clearly see the details of a suit of armour: the higher the

rank the smaller the links of the armour. Armour with smaller links was more

expensive to make and more comfortable to wear and therefore only worn by high

ranking officers. You can also distinguish between the different head gear worn by

different warriors.

It took more than thirty years to construct the site, from 246BC to 210BC and more

than half a million people worked on it. The site is not yet fully excavated and

Chinese archaeologists have decided not to open the tomb itself as it may contain

high levels of mercury.

Chinese archaeologists have recently identified the exact location of the



underground mausoleum of China¶s first emperor, Qin Shih Huang-ti. The China

Daily reported this on 28 November last year. Sources at China¶s Ministry of

Science and Technology said that members of an electromagnetic survey team

made the find. The underground mausoleum of the emperor who unified China is

exactly under the mound which has long been thought to mark the spot. Liu Shuyi,the director of the research group, said that as far as could be determined water has

not entered the main coffin chamber.

According to the survey, the mausoleum is in the form of an ³underground palace´,

while the coffin chamber is 80 metre long and 50 metre wide. The research team

has no idea of what is buried there until a full-scale excavation is launched. Sima

Qian, the Han dynasty historian described it as an underground palace of treasures

encased in cast bronze. Included are the finest furnitures and fittings for his future

use. And within it the two mighty rivers of the empire, the Yangzi and the Yellow

are represented in mercury and through mechanical means flow into an inland sea.Torches of whale oil once litted the chamber.

The tomb was entered and pillaged shortly after the Emperor¶s death by the rebel

army of General Xiang Yu. Over the years, vegetation covered the mound and in

the years since, it has come to be viewed as a hill. The tomb was re-discovered

quite by accident in 1974 when workers constructing wells came across Qin

dynasty articfacts.

The tomb is at Mount Li some forty kilometers (25 miles) east of Xi¶an, the capitalof Shensi province. It reveals a large quantity of artifacts that give a picture of the

life and times of Qin China. Archaeologists are doing excavation work in three

huge pits and these have yielded exciting archaeological finds. Pit one covers

16,000 square meters while the other two are 17,934 and 1,694 square meters

respectively. An impressive find were the more than 7,000 life-size terracotta

warriors including horses, weapons, and chariots. A museum has since been built

at the site with the three pits accommodated within three large buildings.

Qin Shih Huang-ti brought the various warring states in China under his rule in

221 BC and became China¶s first emperor. Born in 259 B.C. he was only 13 whenhis father the ruler of Qin died.

The state of Qin he took over from his father was the smallest and poorest of the

states. It was located along the geographical periphery and easily defended Wei

Valley in northwest China. He accepted scholars of the Legalist school of



philosophy to be advisers as he charted an ambitious strategy against neighboring

states.

The construction of canals in Qin opened new agricultural land and strengthened

the economy of the state. In the rise of Qin¶s military might, the peasantry was thekey. The peasantry produced stocks of surplus food to support long military

campaigns and it supplied fighting men. The nature of warfare had altered as

battles between vast armies of armed peasant conscripts replaced the knightly

combats of opposing sides. Qin¶s peasant army was the most disciplined and some

notion of this formidable force is captured in the Xi¶an terracotta warriors.

Qin eventually defeated the more powerful Han, Zhao, Wei, Ch¶u, and Yen. In 221

B.C. he subdued Ch¶i The military campaign had been swift and took only 17

years. He was soon ruler over all of China and he called himself not Wang or king

which he thought befitted only rulers of states but Huang Ti. It was a title reservedonly for deities and mythical rulers of the past, but which he now appropriated for

use as emperor. He was Shih, the first, of the Huang ti.

Having unified China, Shih Huang-ti proceeded to centralize the administration.

He did away with the feudal system, divided the country into provinces and created

a bureaucracy. A network of roads to move his troops and commercial goods was

built. He standardized the written script and this is an enduring achievement. He

also standardized all weights, measures, and coinage. According to Sima Qian, all

weapons were confiscated and taken to the Qin capital to be melted down. He then built the Great Wall, connecting stretches built by earlier states, to defend the

empire against the invading Hsiung-nu and which still is today the most massive

man-made structure ever built and most recognizable of China¶s heritage. Huge

armies of men, conscripts and convicts were sent to toil and die on the wasteland

and mountains of the northern frontier. It solved the problem of the large reservoir

of labour now made idle with the end of wars. More than just a line of military

fortification the Great Wall became a cultural border between the agricultural

Chinese and the nomadic ³non-Chinese´.

The security in the region provided by the fortifications boosted trade betweenChina and the West. To the south of the country, Shih Huang-ti¶s armies extended

Chinese control over what is today Guangdong province. His sweeping reforms

and the institutions he introduced had profound and lasting impact on the country

These together helped ensure China¶s cultural and political unity ever since.



But the dynastic histories had always presented Shih Huang ti not in heroic terms

but as the most feared and hated of China¶s rulers. Indeed, Sima Qian recorded that

there were at least three attempts to kill him, and these accounts provide much of

the inspiration for the storyline of a recent film Hero.

Shih Huang exacted high taxes on his people and sent hundreds of thousands to

work on ambitious building projects including his many palaces. His massive tomb

covering some 20 square miles took 720,000 workers to complete. Entombed with

him when he died were the mausoleum builders so that no one should know its

secrets, as were all his childless concubines. Most of his treasures were buried with

him as well as the 7,000 intricately sculpted terracotta warriors to protect him in

the after-life.

The Qin emperor boasted that his dynasty would last ten thousand generations. He

died in 210 B.C. at the age of 49 and less than five years later, the Qin dynasty wasoverthrown. He had exiled his eldest and most able son to the frontier region and

the younger son who took over was weak and easily manipulated.

Under the new Han rulers, Confucianist scholars gained ascendancy in the imperial

bureaucracy. The Confucianists, it is said, never forgave Shih Huang-ti for what he

did to the scholars and the books. They therefore cast the first emperor of China in

the worst possible light.

In recent years, there has been a re-evaluation of the life and times of Shih Huang-ti. There is a more favourable assessment of him and his achievements. This

revision came at a time when the Confucianists had lost influence with the end of

the mandarin-bureaucratic system. Qin Shih Huang-ti will continue to fascinate

those interested in Chinese history and of great men of the past. The discovery of

the exact location of his tomb is likely to create even more interest in the unifier of

China.

*The buried army faces east, poised for battle, about three-quarters of a mile from

the outer wall of the tomb proper, guarding it from Shihuangdi¶s chief former

adversaries, who had come from that direction. In pits nearby have been found the

remains of seven humans (possibly the emperor¶s children), a subterranean stable

king of qin

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