The Affairs of Scholars (Bonus Chapter)

Tian Feng flipped through the pages of the newly published Analects, his heart surging with tremendous excitement. The impact this book had brought him was simply too great.

One had to understand that, in the Late Han Dynasty, the cost of raising a scholar was far too high. The most difficult thing to obtain was still books.

It was not that original books were hard to come by. For example, the Analects contained only 11,705 characters and was divided into the first ten chapters, the Upper Analects, and the last ten chapters, the Lower Analects. Such basic books were not difficult to obtain.

What was difficult was finding someone to teach you. Without a teacher, you simply could not understand them.

In ancient times, writing on Bamboo Slips was difficult, so it was impossible to give you lengthy explanations. Instead, people tried to express an entire idea, or several different ideas, in just a few concise words.

Even in modern times, people still said that one had to listen for the meaning behind the words, let alone in an era when productivity was relatively low.

If you had a book but could not understand it, then what the hell was the difference between having it and not having it? That was why teachers held such a lofty position, practically on the same level as the parents who had given you life.

Yet the book in Tian Feng's hands, though not particularly thick, contained not only the original text of the Analects, but also interpretations from five different schools of thought. That was incredibly important.

It could be said that as long as one could read, one could study it independently. As long as one worked hard, one would surely achieve something.

The key lay in the five different schools' interpretations