Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c4.t2.26

c4.t2.26

This custom of sending princes to far-away places for their higher education seems to have been prevalent in many a State of those days. Court-life at home was necessarily felt baneful for the growing prince. All sorts of luxuries, pleasures and comforts only made a prince's life easygoing and practically, as we might see even to-day, useless for heavy responsibilities that attended a king. It was this feeling of practical utility that inspired kings of those days, "deliberately and as a matter of policy," to send their princes abroad to acquire valuable practical experience about men and affairs of the world.¹ By journeying on foot through villages and towns, plains and deserts, countries and kingdoms, they naturally gained rich experience which turned out to be a source of great help in their later life. "Now kings of former times" says the *Tila-Muṭṭhi-Jātaka*,² "though there might be a famous teacher living in their own city, used to send their sons to foreign countries afar off to complete their education, that by this means they might learn to quell their pride and highmindedness, and endure heat or cold, and be made acquainted with the ways of the world." This is in complete consonance with the spirit of Kauṭilya who urges upon the prince a thorough course of intellectual training and moral discipline.³ A thorough politician and a psychologist that he was, Kauṭilya realized the great fact that from education springs discipline and that only a prince with a disciplined mind and body can carry on administration on sound lines. Did not the kings of the *Jātakas* remember this great truth, when they sent their sons abroad?