Education in Ancient India c3.18

c3.18

**Personality not Repressed:** There is a general impression that Hindu educationalists suppressed personality by prescribing a uniform course of education and enforcing it with an iron discipline. Such however was not the case. The caste system had not become hidebound down to *c.* 500 B.C. and till that time a free choice of profession or career was possible both in theory and practice. Later on when the system became rigid; the theory* no doubt was that everybody should follow his hereditary profession, but the practice permitted considerable freedom to enterprising individuals, as will be shown in the following chapter. It is wrong to conclude from some stray passages that the whole of the Brahmana community, if not the whole of the Aryan community, was compelled to devote twelve years to the task of memorising the Vedic texts.¹ Kshatriyas and Vaishyas never took seriously to the Vedic learning; only a section of the Brahmanas dedicated themselves to the Vedic studies, while the rest of the community learnt only a few Vedic hymns necessary for their daily use, and devoted their main energy to the study of the subjects of their own choice like logic, philosophy, literature, poetics or law. The educational curriculum of the Smṛitis represents the Utopian idealism of the Brahmana theologian and not the actual reality in society.