Ch'in

Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Wikipedia.

Ch'in

, dynasty of China (221–206 b.c.)

Ch'in (chĭn), dynasty of China, which ruled from 221 B.C. to 206 B.C. The word China is derived from Ch'in, the first dynasty to unify the country by conquering the warring feudal states of the late Chou period. King Cheng took the title Shih Huang-ti or Shi Huangdi [first august emperor] in 221 B.C. and began to consolidate the new empire. In matters of state he was counseled by Li Ssu (d. 208 B.C.), a scholar of the Legalist school of philosophy, which emphasized the need for strict laws in social and political relations and for obedience to state authority. Under Shih Huang-ti, Ch'in extended the empire W to Guizhou, N to Gansu, and S to Tonkin in what is now Vietnam, and made the capital Xianyang (near modern Xi'an, Shaanxi prov.) the most splendid city of China; it is speculated that much of the Great Wall was built during his reign. To govern the vast empire, Ch'in abolished feudalism, instituted a centralized government that was the model for later unifying dynasties, established uniform laws, weights, and measures, standardized the written language, and built a network of roads and canals that converged on the capital. Ch'in Shih Huang-ti has been regarded as a brutal autocrat by many since he is said to have imposed harsh laws, levied heavy taxes, tolerated no criticism, and burned all books except the useful ones on medicine and agriculture. Shih Huang-ti died in 210 B.C. and was succeeded by a weakling son. Overburdened peasants revolted and overthrew the Ch'in dynasty in 206 B.C. Soon after, the Han dynasty came to power in China.

Bibliography

See D. Bodde, China's First Unifier (1938, repr. 1967); D. Twitchett and M. Loewe, ed., The Cambridge History of China (Vol. 1, 1986).

References in periodicals archive ?

(83.) For that story, see Shift 6.254-55 and also Petersen, "Which Books Did the First Emperor of Ch'in Burn?" My thanks to the anonymous reviewer for this observation.

The "Yiwen zhi" [phrase omitted] (Treatise on Arts and Letters) Bibliography in Its Own Context

To the tune Ch'in yuan ch'un [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Meeting this evening, Exiles at the world's edge, All of us drunk, Quaffing from sparrow-goblets; Hearing the silken strings, Plucked by silver-cased fingers, The tinkling of ice, The dripping of jade....

Bizarre circuses, barbaric costumes: Hong Kong and the aspirations of translation

Even by the mid 1980s, well-known Chinese scholars still regarded the Yueh peoples, including those occupying northern Vietnam, as branches or "brotherly ethnic groups" of the Chinese race who were civilized solely by the expansion of Ch'in Shih-Huang-Ti and his Han successors (see Xiaorong Han 2004, pp.

"Colonial" and "postcolonial" views of Vietnam's pre-history

Three substantial chapters present the history of the Western Ch'in era (385-421 AD) and the primary sources on Buddhism remaining from that era, a full analysis of the bronze Buddha altar with canopy found in eastern Kansu in 1976, and five-Buddha and multiple Buddha groupings throughout China and Central Asia in the early period.

Early Buddhist art of China and Central Asia; v.3: The Western Ch'in in Kansu in the Sixteen Kingdoms Period and inter-relationships with the Buddhist art of Gandhara

He emphasised the Ch'in, the natural affection and love, in order to make the set of connections immensely appropriate and reliable.

The mark of a Confucianist leader

HULSEWE, REMNANTS OF CH'IN LAW (1985); Yuan Yuan Shen, Conceptions and Receptions of Legality: Understanding the Complexity of Law Reform in Modern China, in LIMITS, supra note 2; Karen Turner, War, Punishment, and The Law of Nature in Early Chinese Concepts of The State, 53 HARV.

Were Chinese rulers above the law? Toward a theory of the rule of law in China from early times to 1949 CE

At the end of this period, the Ch'in state gradually emerged victorious.

The past as prism: China and the shock of plural sovereignty

(ed.), The Grand Scribe's Records (Indiana University Press, 1994); Derk Bodde, China's First Unifier: a study of the Ch'in Dynasty as Seen in the Life of Li Si 280?-208 BC (E.J.

China's first empire: Michael Loewe looks at the dynastic, administrative and intellectual background of the Qin empire, which defined how China would be run for more than 2,000 years, and at the life and achievements of the First Emperor Shi Huangdi, one of the greatest state-builders of history, whose tomb was guarded by the famous terracotta army

At birth, Prince Zong bears the sign of the Qin (pronounced ch'in), the mark of a band of outlaws.