Sarvadarshanasangraha 12.20

12.20

sāṅgaṃ ca sarahasyaṃ ca tam ācāryaṃ pracakṣate// iti/

In the Smṛti rule,[12] "Let him admit as a pupil the Brahman lad when eight years old (by investing him with the sacred cord), let him instruct him," the object of the direction appears to be the pupil's instruction. Now a direction must have reference to somebody to be directed; and if you ask who is here to be directed, I reply, "He who desires to be a teacher," since, by Pāṇini's rule (i. 3, 36), the root nī is used in the ātmanepada when honour, &c., are implied, i.e., here the duty which a teacher performs to his pupils. He who is to be directed as to admitting a pupil is the same person who is to be directed as to teaching him, since both are the object of one and the same command. Hence the inspired sage Manu has said (ii. 140), "The Brāhman who girds his pupil with the sacrificial cord and then instructs him in the Veda, with its subsidiary aṅgas and mystic doctrines, they call a spiritual teacher (ācārya)." Now the teaching which is the function of the teacher cannot be fulfilled without the learning which is the function of the pupil, and therefore the very injunction to teach implies and establishes a corresponding obligation to learn, since the influencer's efforts fail without those of one to be influenced. If you object that this view does not make reading the Veda the object of definite injunction, I reply, What matters it to us if it is not? For even if there is no reason for us to admit a separate injunction for reading the Veda, it will still remain perpetually enjoined as a duty, because the passage which mentions it is a perpetual anuvāda or "supplementary repetition."[13] Therefore the former primâ facie argument and its answer, which were given before under the idea that there was a definite injunction to read the Veda, must now be discussed in another way to suit this new view.