Qin Er Shi
First, the oldest hypothesis suggests that "baka" originated as a Chinese literary "allusion to a historical fool", the Qin Dynasty traitor Zhao Gao ( 207 BCE) from the "Records of the Grand Historian". This etymology first appears in the (c. 1548) "Unbo Irohashū" () dictionary, which glosses "baka" as meaning "point at a deer and say horse" (指鹿曰馬). Namely, the Chinese idiom "zhǐlù-wéimǎ" (; lit. "point at a deer and call it a horse", Japanese "Shika o Sashite Uma to Nasu") meaning "deliberate misrepresentation for ulterior purposes". Zhao was an infamous minister who served the first emperor Qin Shi Huang (r. 246–221 BCE) and forced the second Qin Er Shi (r. 210–207 BCE) to commit suicide.