Ancient Indian Education: An Inquiry into its Origin, Development, and Ideals c4.37

c4.37

We have already seen how the influence of the priesthood had been growing and the ritual of the sacrifice enormously developed. But there must always have been some earnest seekers after truth who were not satisfied with sacrificial ritual. Already in some of the latest hymns of the *Ṛigveda* there are traces of philosophical speculation. Men were asking what the universe is and how it came into being, what the soul of man is, and what law governs birth and death. These and other great questions were troubling the minds of thoughtful persons, and those who sought an answer to them often forsook home and family and worldly duties and retired to the forests, where they spent their time in asceticism and meditation. This religious ferment was contributed to not only by Brāhmans, but by many religious laymen. At the end of the *Brāhmaṇas* are certain treatises known as *Āraṇyakas*,¹ or ‘forest-books’. They are allegorical expositions of the sacrificial ritual, and are considered to be the *Brāhmaṇas* of the *Vānaprasthas*, an order of forest hermits that appeared about this time, who no longer performed the actual sacrifices, but only meditated on them. Some, however, have considered them to be treatises which, on account of their mystic sanctity, were only to be communicated in the solitude of the forest. They form a transition to the *Upanishads*, which are often embedded in them. These are treatises wholly given up to philosophical speculation, and represent the last stage of the *Brāhmaṇa* literature. The higher philosophical knowledge which they set forth came to be recognized as the *Vedānta* (end of the Veda)—the completion and crown of Vedic learning. These treatises were composed some time between 800 and 500 B.C. The leading ideas of this philosophical speculation are that the world has been evolved from the *Ātman*, or Universal Soul, and that this is also the Self within us. The inequalities of human life are explained by the doctrines of *karma* and transmigration.