Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c11.s5.18

c11.s5.18

**Videha under Janaka.** To the evidence here adduced (partly from the *Śatapatha*) of the pre-eminence of the Kuru-Pañchālas in the Vedic world may be opposed, however, the evidence of the same text itself regarding the important part played by the people of Videha living far in the east and their king Janaka. In the literary Congress held by Janaka who invited to it the entire body of Kuru-Pañchāla Brahmins, the palm of victory belongs to Yājñavalkya, a Videhan scholar [xiv, 6, 1, 1–3; especially 6, 9, 20]. This shows, firstly, that Vedic culture was held in honour at a place far east from the land of the Kuru-Pañchālas—a shifting, so to speak, of the literary centre of gravity—and, secondly, the most important figure in that Congress of Brahmins, whose authority on spiritual questions is regarded as decisive, belongs to that eastern region. This fact, however, has to be considered along with other facts related about the Congress in order to get at the truth of the matter. For the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa* itself shows clearly that Brahmanic culture among the Videhas is only an offshoot from the Kuru-Pañchālas. Yājñavalkya himself, as we have seen, is a pupil of Āruṇi, a Pañchāla. Next, the Brahmans whom Janaka invites to his Congress are all—except Yājñavalkya—*Kurupañchālānāṁ brāhmaṇāḥ*. The king of the east, with his regard and partiality for the culture of the west, pays homage to that culture by collecting at his court the literary celebrities of the west—much as the intellects of Athens gathered at the court of Macedonian princes. Over and above this stands the evidence already cited, showing how the authority of the west, of the Kuru-Pañchālas, is felt and acknowledged throughout the text and how the land of the Videhas was once a stranger to the sacrificial system as it flourished on the Sarasvatī.