Tribes in Ancient India c53.71

c53.71

There was a technical college of the Śākyas in the mango-grove. ‘It was a long terraced mansion made for the learning of crafts.’⁵ The learning of one or other of the arts was incumbent upon every Śākya youth, for, as we have seen, no father would give his daughter in marriage to an idler or ignoramus. There was also a school for archery at Kapilavastu, where the Śākyas were trained.⁶ The Śākyas being a Kṣatriya tribe devoted to warlike pursuits, and surrounded on all sides by warlike tribes, the school of archery was necessarily a flourishing institution. The Lalitavistara describes in details the various sciences and arts, beginning with the arts of writing, that the young Siddhārtha had to learn. But the whole description is that of an ideal school which the poet imagined, no doubt basing the account on the condition of education in India at the time in which he wrote. There is nothing in the description that might be called particularly Śākya.