Li Si

Li Si is identified as the premier who advised the ruler to consign old books to the flames, but whose proposed exception for works on medicine, divination, and husbandry spared the I Ching. His brief appearance links a campaign of destruction to the survival of a text that later readers treated as both an ancient divination manual and a source of moral and political interpretation.

The recommendation and its exception

In the account of the book burning in 213 BC, Li Si addresses a memorial to the ruler recommending that the old books be burned. The recommendation was not absolute: it exempted books concerned with medicine, divination, and husbandry. The I Ching was regarded as a book of divination, and so fell within the protected category. Its preservation is presented not as a special act on behalf of this particular work, but as the consequence of how it was classified.

Consequences for the I Ching

The exemption placed the I Ching among the ancient literature that survived a destructive episode in the history of Chinese books. The account uses this survival to explain why the text could be received as an old work that had come down through later generations. Its fate contrasts with that of most ancient Chinese literature, which the fires damaged or destroyed.

The book’s survival also preserved a distinction that mattered to its later interpretation: the older Text was based on lineal figures and was understood as earlier than the Appendixes associated with Confucius. The reported exemption did not settle the work’s authorship or date, but allowed its Text and later commentarial tradition to remain available for study.

Divination and later readings

The category that protected the book also points to its early practical identity. The account describes divination using stalks and lineal figures, while stressing that its purpose was to assess whether contemplated plans and circumstances would prove fortunate or unfortunate, rather than to establish future events absolutely. The book’s continuing availability therefore carried forward both a divinatory procedure and the material later readers interpreted in ethical, social, and political terms.

Li Si’s role is narrow but consequential: he is not presented as an interpreter of the I Ching, but as the author of a policy whose exception enabled its survival. The episode makes preservation contingent on the same practical classification that later discussion would distinguish from the book’s broader intellectual reputation.