Education in Ancient India c13.s1.6

c13.s1.6

The changed Attitude of later Times: Unfortunately for the progress of learning and scholarship Vedic literature was canonised some time about 600 B.C. An almost equally high reverence came to be paid to the Smṛitis and Purāṇas in course of time. The authorship of these works came to be attributed to divine or inspired agency, and it was averred that what they contained could not be false, what they opposed could not be true. Theories began to be accepted or rejected according as they were in conformity with or opposed to the statements of the sacred books on the point. Intellectual giants like Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja had to spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy to prove that their systems of philosophy were in conformity with and the natural outcomes of the Upaniṣadic hypotheses. If the hold of the Śrutis and Smṛitis were not so exacting, there would have been freer development of philosophy. At any rate many of the remarkable intellects of the Middle Ages would have found it possible to write independent works on their own systems of philosophy instead of being compelled to present it unsystematically, while engaged in the ostensible task of writing commentaries on the revealed literature. Instead of Nibandha compilations, we would have possessed original Smṛitis of the later times.