 Confucianism began with the teachings of Confucius, despite the fact that Confucius in no way saw himself as founding a school of philosophy. Arguably his foremost concern was to effect a restoration of the kind of socio-political order that had prevailed, at least in his mind, at the beginning of the Zhou dynasty (1027–256 B.C.E.). In search of a position of influence that would enable him to contribute to a return to such order, Confucius traveled from realm to realm within the Zhou kingdom, hoping that his ideas about how government and society ought to be aligned would find an enthusiastic patron. Although Confucius never succeeded in this, along the way a group of interested students came to associate themselves with him. For his followers Confucius appears to have emerged as much as a teacher as a political figure. While Confucius never wrote any independent treatises or dialogues that were meant to serve as systematic expressions of his personal ideas, over time reports about his discussions with his disciples came to be recorded and edited into a work most commonly translated as the Analects. Some scholars have long questioned the extent to which the Analects actually represents a true and consistent expression of Confucius’ thought. Nevertheless, the text has been accepted (perhaps naively) by sufficient numbers of followers over the centuries to make it, whether authentic or not, a work that must be read and understood by anyone hoping to develop more than a superficial appreciation of what have been received as Confucius’ teachings.