Education in Ancient India c4.74

c4.74

Conclusion: It will be thus seen that with the exception of the exclusion of the Shudras from the Vedic education, the caste system for a long time did not result in restricting professions to particular castes. This was but natural. Teaching may be a fit profession for Brahmanas, but if some of them were intellectually inferior, their birth could not impart to them the necessary efficiency as teachers. Even a Brahmana writer therefore is constrained to observe that dull Brahmana children should follow the profession of the Kshatriya or the Vaishya.¹ Ambitious Brahmanas also could not be prevented from following the military profession, where glittering prizes awaited the successful adventurer. A Brahmana priest of holy Benares is to be seen sending his son to Taxila to learn archery, because it was predicted that he was to be a king.¹ It was ambition alone that was responsible for sovereignty being vested in Brahmana families like those of the Śuṅgas, the Kaṇvas and the Kadambas. The recruitment to the army was not confined to the Kshatriya caste; inscriptions make it clear that it was very largely recruited from the agriculturists and Shudras. Dhanurveda also contemplates military education for all the four castes. It is interesting to note that when Yuan Chwang was in India in the second quarter of the 7th century A. D., the kings of Ujjain, Maheshvar and Assam were Brahmanas, those of Pariyātra and Kanauj, Vaishyas, and those of Matipura and Sindh, Shudras. If members of all classes could become kings, it follows that they must be all following the military profession. The commercial and industrial lines were also very often followed by many Brahmanas and Kshatriyas. The caste system therefore made education rigid only to a limited degree and that too from c. 800 A. D.