The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c10.31

c10.31

The following point also I might make good, and that is, that the young Khattiyas did not simply outwardly pursue the study of the Vedas, which, according to the law-books, is a duty binding upon all the "twice-born." In all places where the question is of the education of the Khattiyas, the age at which the youth leaves his paternal home and goes to his teacher is universally given as the sixteenth year of life (I. 259, 262, 273; II. 2, 87, 277; III. 122). If the young prince had up to then been instructed in his father's house in the elementary sciences and physical exercise, there followed, on the attainment of maturity, the higher spiritual culture, the religious study.¹ When it is explained in the Gâmaṇicaṇḍa Jâtaka (II. 297) that a prince who has been instructed by his father for seven years in the three Vedas, is only seven years old at the time of his father's death, we have to do with a marvellous child, a true prince of fiction,¹ whilst the remaining passages give us throughout the impression of a plain narrative.