Erya

"Er" signifies nearness; "ya" signifies correctness. Together they form a vast sea of classical exegesis and a master key to the Six Arts. As recorded in the Book of Sui: Treatise on Classics, this work was once placed alongside "The Classic of Filial Piety," for its role in rectifying names and distinguishing things made it a fitting companion to the study of the classics. Scholars today regard it as the first rung on the ladder of classical learning and the vessel by which one crosses into antiquity. That it glosses "chu," "zai," "shou," and "ji" all under the single meaning of "beginning" is itself a testament to how one word may reveal the heart of a matter, drawing ten thousand things back to a single source, resolving for readers across all ages the great riddles left by the ancients.