The controversy between modern and ancient literature is an interesting thing, and around the controversy between modern and ancient literature, Confucian scholars in the world are also roughly divided into modern literature schools and ancient literature schools, and they are constantly fighting with each other.

For Liu Bei, it doesn't matter what the ancient and modern texts are fighting for, the important thing is that they are "fighting".

The controversy between modern and ancient literature injected inexplicable vitality into the academic environment of the Eastern Han Dynasty, which was a pool of stagnant water, and thus provided a ray of life for some people who did not have a high social status but tried to climb up.

When he began to study with Lu Zhi, Liu Bei set his sights on the controversy between modern and ancient texts, trying to understand the essence of this academic struggle that ran through the Han Dynasty.

To put it simply, the source of the dispute between ancient and modern texts can be traced back to Qin Shi Huang.

Ying Zheng's eldest brother Fen VI Yu Lie, relying on the Legalist law to abolish the six countries to unify the country, was the world's first hard-core ruthless man at that time, peerless macho man, very strong, so he was very uninterested in the chattering Confucianism.

And at that time, the era was in the period when the county system was established at the beginning and the feudal system was still in place, and people in the world had many opinions on whether the Qin State was divided into feudal or county counties after the unification of the world.

At that time, a group of Confucian scholars opposed the county system, advocated the feudal system, pursued the ideals of Confucius and demanded retro, which was not tolerated by the eldest brother of Yingzheng and Prime Minister Li Si, so the book burning incident was triggered.

In essence, this book burning is no different from Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty's deposition of the hundred schools, both for the purpose of unifying thoughts, and there is no direct relationship between the later "Confucianism" and the book burning incident.

But in any case, the eldest brother dug a pit, lit a fire, and burned a batch of bamboo slips, disrupting the inheritance of Confucianism.

It is impossible to break it, there are many protégés of Confucianism, and the bamboo slips are gone, so some old Confucian students have worked hard to memorize the sage's articles, and they are forced to carry them, waiting for the end of Yingzheng.

When Yingzheng curled his braids, the Han Dynasty was established, and the forbidden area of Confucianism and speech was loosened, so a group of surviving old Confucians stood up.

They relied on memory to dictate articles to their disciples, who recorded them on bamboo slips, restoring the physical inheritance of Confucianism and returning to the stage of history.

This is the origin of the modern Wenjing and the modern literary school.

The origin of the school of ancient literature is more interesting.

According to their own accounts, the origin of the ancient scriptures was discovered by Liu Bang's son, King Lu, in the walls of the old mansion of the Kong family in Qufu when he was repairing his palace.

It is said that when King Lu tried to rip off Confucius's old house, he inexplicably heard a pleasant rhythm, and immediately did not dare to invade the old house of the Kong family, but was very respectful to the old house of the Kong family.

After the ancient classics were discovered from the walls, they were hidden in the inner treasury of the Han Palace, and from the beginning of the Han Dynasty to the end of the Han Dynasty, there was no news at all until they were discovered by Liu Xin, a member of the royal family who was in charge of editing the books.

Because the scriptures were written during the Warring States Period, Liu Xin deduced that these scriptures were preserved by a group of Confucian scholars who had both courage and wisdom at the risk of their lives during the Qin Dynasty.

Isn't this more classic and more authentic than the scriptures dictated by those old Confucian scholars?

I, Liu Xin, have reason to suspect that you guys are all second-hand counterfeit and shoddy products!

Who is Orthodox?

This is orthodoxy!

After Emperor Ai of the Han Dynasty ascended the throne, Liu Xin wrote to Emperor Ai of the Han Dynasty, asking for additional scholars to be added to the ancient scriptures, and further seeking to replace the modern scriptures.

Of course, he did not succeed.

Since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, modern literature and classics have always been official orthodox academics, and now I don't know where a bunch of books of unknown origin have come out, and they dare to claim to be sage articles?

You don't ask what kind of situation we will face after we lose our orthodox academic status by relying on the supremacy and inheritance of modern classics?

What you have lost is only the ancient scriptures and the infinite possibilities of the future, but what we have lost is real benefits!

Vested interests in academic and political success, of course, are vigorously opposed to the elevation of the ancient scriptures to the halls of elegance.

However, under the system dominated by today's literary school, the non-vested interests who cannot obtain higher interests naturally surround the ancient classics with ulterior motives, taking the ancient classics as their lifesavers, trying to achieve overtaking in corners.

This is where the struggle between the two sides begins.

Although both sides claim that the scriptures they have studied are the true saints' texts, at the end of the day, the modern school of literature is the official orthodox school.

Even since Liu Bang established the Han Dynasty, a series of policies formulated by the imperial court were guided by the content of the modern scriptures.

Many of the things that modern people take for granted were unknown in that era, mainly because the period of history from the end of the Warring States period to the end of the Qin state was so short that the Qin Dynasty had many things that should have been done or were not done at all.

It is said that it was the first feudal dynasty in Chinese history, and the Qin Dynasty also did a lot of things, but there were more things they didn't do, and they left a mess to the final victor Liu Bang, which made Liu Bang extremely annoyed.

For example, because the eldest brother of Yingzheng did not have a queen, so that after Liu Bangli made Lu Pheasant the queen, everyone did not know where the queen's responsibilities and authority were, plus the transcendent status of the Lu family, so Lu Pheasant's power as the queen was boundless at that time.

She could have said that my power as queen is unlimited.

Because there is no pioneer, no one knows what the result will be, so everyone can only wade across the river by feeling the stones, take one step, count one step, leave the good ones, and find a way to eliminate the bad ones.

Some things that seem unthinkable now could not be corrected at the time, because no matter how smart a person is, he has no vision for the future.

Most of the founders of the Han Dynasty came from humble backgrounds, had no courtesy, and did not have much respect for Liu Bang after becoming the emperor, and thought that Liu Bang was a bastard who ate dog meat as he did back then.

Liu Bang was very troubled and didn't know what to do, at this time, the earliest masters of modern literature and classics smelled an opportunity.

A Confucian student named Shusun Tong came to Liu Bang's side and told Liu Bang that although Confucianism can't help you fight the world, he can help you manage and is a managerial talent.

Liu Bang asked his uncle and grandson to give it a try.

Uncle Sun Tong made a set of etiquette plans, how to eat, how to drink, how to walk, how to meet the emperor, and if the ministers did not obey, they had to use the law to deal with him.

So the ministers didn't dare to be rude to Liu Bang anymore, and Liu Bang said happily, "I didn't know until today that being an emperor is such a cool thing."

At that time, Shusun Tong's method only involved Liu Bang's personal troubles, but when you zoom in to the entire Han Empire, you can find that the Han Empire urgently needed a set of mature theoretical guidance that could govern the country at that time.

Before Liu Bang, the rulers of the country were all nobles of the past generations, and everyone had their own family traditions to govern the country, but where did Liu Bang and his comrades-in-arms have this kind of background?

It was at this time that the literary school came into being, conforming to the needs of the Han Empire and providing the Han Empire with a set of theories.

Although they were not immediately fully adopted at the time, they also gained a firm foothold in the Han Dynasty.

After Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, modern literature and classics officially became the official guiding theory for the development of the Western Han Empire at the national level.

Since then, no matter how unbelievable and strange the decisions of the imperial court are, such as the trend of thinking about the change of surnames in the late Western Han Dynasty, the root of it is that it is endorsed by the modern scriptures and scriptures, and by the old Confucius who has been dead for hundreds of years.

Old Master Kong is also miserable.

It stands to reason that after the Western Han Empire had a set of mature theories of state governance, there should be no twists and turns, but the problem is that the modern literature and classics really did not fully comply with the needs of the imperial rulers to provide them with what they needed.

The theorists of modern literature and classics have never designed a set of "Han rites" similar to the Zhou rites for the Han Empire.

Among the Confucian classics, the most important for the state and the emperor are the two classics, the "Rites" and the "Spring and Autumn Period", the former being theory and the latter being practice.

What the rulers of the Han Empire needed was a set of "Son of Heaven Rites" that ruled the four poles, and the "rites" in today's literary and scriptural theories are actually the rites of scholars, and what they can do according to this set of theories is to [push the Rites and go to the Son of Heaven].

This also means that in the etiquette theory of today's literature and scriptures, there is no essential difference between the Son of Heaven and the scholar, what the Son of Heaven can enjoy, the scholar can also enjoy, the difference between the two sides is the quantity, not whether there is or not.

Not to mention the Ram Spring and Autumn School, which once flourished during the period of Emperor Wu, this school is more direct, saying what [the Son of Heaven is arrogant to the sky, the princes are arrogant to the Son of Heaven, and the doctor is arrogant to the princes], the cause of all problems is that the Son of Heaven did not do it right, which led to the wrong people below, so the Son of Heaven must lead by example.

The core idea is that if the Son of Heaven makes a mistake, then he has no right to blame the people below for making a mistake to him.

If this set of ideas were to be extended a little, it would be the theory of the prisoner of heaven...... Hiss, don't dare to think about it, don't dare to think about it.

Will this satisfy the needs of the rulers of the Han Empire?

Qin has changed the Son of Heaven into the emperor, and the emperor is completely different from Zhou Tianzi in terms of status.

My lord, times have changed.

This stems from the rulers' dissatisfaction with the modern school of literature and literature.

And the school of ancient literature and classics and ancient literature was "born" in this context.

Compared with the modern school of literature and the modern classics, the ancient literature school and the ancient classics are more inclined to cooperate with the rulers, and take the initiative to adapt to the needs of the rulers to create theories that meet the needs of the rulers.

They also have their own set of theoretical guidance methods, using the "Zhou Official Rites" to oppose the "Rites" of the modern literary school, and claiming that the "Zhou Official Rites" was written by the Duke of Zhou.

In practice, they used Zuo's Spring and Autumn to oppose the Ram Spring and Autumn Period, which was admired by the modern literary school, and also claimed that all the examples recorded in the Zuo Biography were also written by Zhou Gong.

Anyway, it was to raise the honorific title of the Duke of Zhou to suppress Confucius, trying to win the battle between modern and ancient texts.

Of course, they did not succeed, because the development of modern literature and classics was earlier and the foundation was more profound, and it was purely hard power that could not be fought for.

Hard power can't fight, and the ancient literature school tried to find another way, conforming to the trend of passing on the country and changing the surname of the literary school itself in the late Western Han Dynasty, and supporting Wang Mang to engage in retro, which once made the ancient literature school flourish.

As a result, Wang Mang played retro and got off.

The school of paleoliterature also failed as a result.

Therefore, politically, the modern literary school has always had an advantage, and the scholars and doctors established by the imperial court have always been monopolized by the Confucian scholars of the modern literary school, and the officially recognized Five Classics and Fourteen Laws are all modern literary classics.

During the period of Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han Dynasty, out of political needs, he established the "Zuo's Spring and Autumn Period", which is considered to be an ancient literary classic, as an official school, and set up a doctorate, and the ancient literature school seems to have seen the dawn.

As a result, after the Baihuguan Conference during the reign of Emperor Zhang of the Han Dynasty, in order to unify academic cognition and thinking, the official and academic status of the "Zuo's Spring and Autumn Period" was deposed, the ancient literature school was severely hit, and the semi-official process that had just begun was also interrupted.

Since then, the school of ancient literature has only continued to develop among the people.

However, it is not without benefit that the so-called good and bad are relied on, and the ancient literature school is forced to become an opposition school, at least the inheritance is no longer a problem.

In order to attack the seemingly impregnable fortress of the modern literary school, and also to prevent being completely crushed by the modern literary school, they chose to take the road of academic downward movement.

Since the early Eastern Han Dynasty, the school of ancient literature has gradually opened up some academic knowledge to the middle class of society, widely absorbing the fresh blood of the backbone of society, and at the same time, it also has the longing of ants to bite and kill elephants.

The academic inheritance of the modern literary school, which dominated the academic circle of the Han Dynasty, was only oriented to its own internal affairs, with blood and in-laws as the main means of contact, and it was rarely open to the outside world, and the fertile water did not flow into the fields of outsiders, becoming more and more conservative.

Although they retained their official and academic status, they became increasingly rigid and cumbersome, lost their ability to innovate, and combined with the doctrine of prophecy, they became chattering and unpredictable.

So much so that some of the more enlightened scholars of the modern literary school even felt that the modern scriptures were inferior to the ancient classics, but began to take the initiative to learn the ancient scriptures, which contributed to the integration of modern and ancient texts to a certain extent in the Eastern Han Dynasty.

With the destruction of the political stability of the central government of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the gradual decline of official Taixue, the academic circle of the Eastern Han Dynasty also began to change.

Since the Han Dynasty and the Emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the emperors were generally young, and their relatives took the political stage to dominate politics, and the emperors would try their best to regain power when they became adults, so the political stability of the Eastern Han Dynasty began to be severely challenged.

Along with the loss of political stability, academic stability, which is highly bound to political stability, has also been challenged and undermined.

Taixue gradually became abandoned, doctors no longer lectured, and students all over the world gradually ceased to take Taixue as an academic authority, and the scholarship of the Eastern Han Dynasty began to move from unification to division, from the core of Luoyang Taixue to the family as the core of the spread of academics.

Without the strong support of the central government, coupled with its own increasingly closed and conservative nature, the decline of the modern literary school is inevitable, and the family inheritance of the Five Classics and Fourteen Family Laws is more like a political inheritance than an academic inheritance.

On the other hand, in order to survive and transcend, the ancient literature school chose to teach the ancient classics to a wider social group and unite the vast number of landlords and powerful classes.

The bigwigs of the ancient literature school open classes to the society, and the threshold for accepting apprentices is not very low, at least it can be seen, and there are no hidden conditions such as bloodline and in-law relationship.

Therefore, there is an endless stream of scholars, and the foundation of the ancient literary school in society is far more extensive than that of the modern literary school, and the talents in the school are also emerging in an endless stream, constantly innovating and prospering.

Coincidentally, the world-famous Confucian Lu Zhi was born in the study of ancient scriptures.

No matter how coincidental it is, he is also a native of Zhuo County, Zhuo County, Liu Bei is his little fellow countryman, in this era of taking the county as the country, the connection between the two naturally has a layer of advantages.

In this regard, Liu Bei is not unlucky.