Little Kourosh, on the threshold of his fifth year of a life full of wonders, looked upon his two precious, successfully compiled books—"The Comprehensive Dictionary of New Persian" and "A Guide to the Writing of New Persian"—with great excitement and a hidden pride. These were not only a symbol of his unparalleled genius but also vital tools for spreading knowledge and culture in his future empire; keys that could open the doors of wisdom to all. He immediately began the great project of compiling the "Achaemenid Avesta" and, for this purpose, sent his trusted individuals to collect scattered texts and oral traditions from across the Persian and Median lands. This process, which itself required an arduous and time-consuming effort, was expected to take six months, but in the very first month of this collection operation, a great and unforeseen challenge deeply troubled Kourosh's mind.
The teams collecting the Avesta faced many difficulties. The teachings of the Avesta had been transmitted orally for many long years, from one priest to another, and each had their own specific interpretation. The written versions were also scattered in different regions, on various materials, from heavy and fragile clay tablets to rare hides and imported papyri, with different dialects and interpretations. This dispersion, lack of uniformity, and difference in writing style severely slowed down the process of collection and standardization. Kourosh clearly saw that even after the collection was complete, the immense task of manually copying this great treasure would be a greater and almost insurmountable obstacle.
He intended to publish the "Achaemenid Avesta" widely to both promote the New Persian language and to increase his religious influence, thereby consolidating religious unity in his empire. But at the very beginning of this work, he noticed the dreadful slowness and limitations of the existing methods for mass-producing books. Whether for manually copying "The Comprehensive Dictionary of New Persian" and "A Guide to the Writing of New Persian," or for the massive volume that the "Achaemenid Avesta" was supposed to have, each copy required weeks or even months of painstaking work by scribes, whose numbers were limited and whose wages were high. This snail's pace delayed his dream of spreading knowledge.
Kourosh thought to himself: "If I want to bring knowledge to all the people and spread literacy throughout the empire, this snail's pace of manual copying will never be enough." To produce thousands of copies of each book, hundreds of scribes and years of time were needed, which seemed practically impossible. This great obstacle was a solid barrier on the path of his dream for a literate and informed society and could severely slow down the pace of his cultural revolution. Such a limitation would keep knowledge in the monopoly of a small minority of scribes and priests, prevent the exchange of ideas, and slow down progress in science, art, and even governance, plunging society into ignorance.
This deep understanding of the limitations sparked a revolutionary idea in Kourosh's modern mind. He remembered the mass production technologies of the twenty-first century; in particular, he thought of movable type printing, a system that could reuse letters over and over and produce thousands of copies of a book at an unprecedented speed. This idea was, for him, the ultimate solution to overcome the challenge of manual copying and to realize his dream of mass literacy. This process would create a great revolution in the dissemination of information, democratize access to knowledge in an unprecedented way, and free it from the monopoly of a few.
Kourosh, while holding the initial copies of "The Comprehensive Dictionary of New Persian" and "A Guide to the Writing of New Persian" in his small hands, whispered to himself: "If I can create a simple movable type printing process suitable for this era, history will be completely transformed. Books will no longer be hidden treasures in palaces and temples but will flow like water among the people, bringing wisdom to every home and every heart." He had come to believe that this invention was not just a tool, but a driving force for fundamental changes in society.
In his mind, he envisioned a future where literacy was freed from the monopoly of a few and became a tool in the hands of every individual. "This is not just an invention; this is the seed of a revolution," Kourosh whispered to himself, "a revolution that can change the structure of society, the way of governance, and even the art of war. With this tool, I can spread wisdom throughout the empire and ensure the thousand-year stability of my dream. This will be the beginning of a new era of knowledge and enlightenment; an era in which ignorance will give way to awareness and wisdom."