The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s12.34

v2.c40.s12.34

In the earliest Upaniṣads we find only the conception that, beside the life of the student and the householder, men might give themselves up to ascetic practices in their seeking for the truth. There was no idea that the stages of life should be successive, ending with the ascetic stage: the ascetic stage might follow the stage of household life if desired, but equally it might not.⁶ But in the later Upaniṣads, such as the Jābāla⁷, we find the four stages ordered as student, householder, anchorite, Vānaprastha, and finally wandering beggar, Parivrājaka, Bhikṣu. The first two stages remain much as in the Brāhmaṇa period: it is of interest that we hear of cases, where a pupil seems to have been used by his alleged teacher mainly for the purpose of tending his cattle, in return for which the teaching might be long delayed, as in the case of Satyakāma.¹ Other pupils again were deemed unworthy of the teaching they desired: Upakosala² tended the fires for twelve years without his teacher making up his mind to trust him with the sacred knowledge. The householder may still attain the world of Brahman by attention to his duties, if he continues to study and brings up pious sons and pupils, subduing his organs in the self and slaying no life, save at the sacrificial ground. But another view condemns such persons to life in the moon, and then to return to earth again. Sacrifice, Veda study, liberality, and the production of sons are still the chief duties, though, as we have seen, the tendency was growing to reduce the sacrifice to symbolic acts.