The Rashtrakutas and their Times c23.s1.6

c23.s1.6

The Dharmaśāstra literature no doubt lays down that the whole of the Veda was to be studied for 12 years by the first three castes, but it is fairly clear that the society of our period did not pay much attention to this injunction. The Vaishyas of our period had already lost their privilege of the Vedic studies as has been already shown in the last chapter, ³ and the Kshatriyas too, though permitted to study the Vedas, were largely following the Pauranic ritual. ⁴ The normal Kshatriya youth, who intended to follow the hereditary profession of his caste, must have devoted the largest part of his time to the military training. Even in the epic period he had only a smattering of the Vedic knowledge, and we may, therefore, well conclude that in our period the cases of the Kshatriyas taking seriously to Vedic education may have been very rare. Among the Brahmanas themselves, only the professional priests must have concentrated on the study of the sacred lore; the average Brahmana who intended to take up to government service, trade or agriculture would hardly have troubled himself much about remembering the exact accent of the Vedic Mantras. Vedic sacrifices too had gone out of vogue and epigraphical evidence shows that the Puranas and the later Smritis were exercising a remarkable hold on the society as shown already in Chapter XIII. Proficiency in the Dharmaśāstra must have been regarded as a passport to government service in the judicial branch, and we may, therefore, presume that the study of this subject was more popular in our period than the study of the Vedas. It may be pointed out that the term Vedic study in our period did not mean only the cramming of the Vedic Mantras; in some centres the meaning was also studied as the title Vedārthada occurring in one of our records would show.⁵ Astrology was wielding great influence on the popular mind as shown in the last chapter; royal courts used to maintain astrologers⁶ and a number of works on astronomy and astrology were composed in our period. We may, therefore, well presume that this subject was fairly popular in the Sanskrit schools and colleges of our time as is still the case to some extent. One record slightly falling outside our period records an endowment to found a College where the work of the famous Bhāskara alone were to be studied.⁷