秦代坑儒事件 / Qin Kengru Incident

秦代坑儒事件 / Qin Kengru incident is the 212 BCE punishment case Qinji 125-2 treats as separate from the earlier 秦代焚书令. In this source, the immediate chain runs from failed immortality promises through 侯生 and 卢生’s flight and criticism, into 秦始皇’s anger, interrogation of Xianyang scholars, mutual denunciation, and the killing of more than 460 people at 咸阳.

The incident is not presented as a simple campaign to destroy Confucianism. The source records 扶苏’s remonstrance that the punished people read and imitate 孔子, but it also warns that the identity of those killed remains hard to settle with complete certainty. The concept therefore tracks a political-violence sequence rather than using “坑儒” as proof of a single anti-Confucian motive.

The episode makes the incident a convergence point. 求仙政治 creates reliance on fangshi; 方士问责陷阱 makes failure dangerous; 君臣反馈失灵 makes truthful correction scarce; and Qin Shi Huang’s personal control of judgment turns accusation into mass punishment.

Key Claims

• The incident is separate from “焚书,” though later memory often fuses the two into “焚书坑儒.”
• The source’s immediate trigger is fangshi flight and criticism after the failure to obtain immortals and medicine.
• More than 460 people are judged and坑杀 at Xianyang in the episode’s account, while others are sent to frontier service.
• Fusu’s remonstrance gives the victims a scholar/Confucian frame, but the source keeps the fangshi-versus-儒生 identity question open.
• The episode reads Qin Shi Huang’s motive as anger and political control, not necessarily a deliberate project to exterminate Confucian learning.
• The event still displays late Qin brutality and a court information system broken by fear.

Connections

• 嬴政 / 秦始皇, 秦国, and 咸阳 - ruler, regime, and punishment site.
• 侯生, 卢生, 求仙政治, 方士骗术与权威, and 方士问责陷阱 - fangshi background and failed-promise pressure.
• 扶苏, 蒙恬, and 上郡 - remonstrance and frontier exile assignment.
• 秦代焚书令 and 学在王官式知识垄断 - separate but adjacent textual-control branch.
• 君臣反馈失灵 and 帝王行踪保密 - information-control and fear ecology leading into the case.