Ancient Indian Education: An Inquiry into its Origin, Development, and Ideals c9.3

c9.3

Owing, however, to the current philosophy which taught the unreality of this world of time, and that the highest wisdom was to seek release from the worldly fetters which held the soul in bondage, and that the highest knowledge was to become acquainted with the method by which release could be obtained, there was a tendency to despise the practical duties of life and the preparation for them. The idea of the four stages, or *āśramas*, seems to have been formulated to try and check this tendency by inculcating the desirability of a student passing to the state of a householder before he became a forest hermit or wandering ascetic; but many passed straight from the student life to the life of complete renunciation of the world, and the *Upanishads* show us how there was a tendency amongst the more earnest to despise the ordinary learning of the schools and preparation for this life in comparison with the higher philosophic knowledge which was concerned with the life beyond. This was not confined to the Brāhmans, but Kshatriyas and others also were affected by this movement, and the two religions of Jainism and Buddhism were founded by Kshatriyas. Buddhism also, in encouraging the life of meditation and the joining of an order of monks, was, like Brāhmanic philosophy, setting forth an ideal of life which despised, or regarded as unreal, this fleeting world of time, and hence made that education which was a preparation for the practical duties of life, something on a lower plane than that which was a preparation for the other world.