Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c9.19

c9.19

questions other than political were also occasionally discussed in the Samiti, is borne out by the above-mentioned record about Śvetaketu. Śvetaketu was a young man of great learning who, as the Chhāndogya says,² claimed complete knowledge of the sacred and philosophic literature at the age of twenty-four. In the Chhāndogya and Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishads, we see the young man who had just completed his education, presenting himself before the Samiti, also called the Parishad of the Pañchālas (पञ्चानां समितिमयाय, पञ्चानां परिषदमाजगाम). The Kshatriya (Rājanya) king in the Assembly of the Pañchāla nation, Pravāhaṇa Jaivali (or Jaivala), put to him five philosophic questions, none of which the bumptious young man (Kumāra) could answer, and "he had to go away with the remark of Jaivali: '"How could '"anybody who did not know these things say that he had been '"educated?'"³ Here we find the Samiti acting as a sort of national academy.