Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c11.s5.22

c11.s5.22

**Seats of Sacrifice as Seats of Learning.** We have now had an idea of the general geographical background of the culture of the *Brāhmaṇa* period, but regarding the actual seats of this ancient learning we have unfortunately but little evidence. Nowhere in the entire range of this vast and varied literature do we find any direct mention of the locality of any of the numerous schools through which that literature was preserving and propagating itself except in one solitary passage in the *Chhāndogya Upanishad* [v, 3, 1] repeated in the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa* [xiv, 9, 1, 1] testifying to the Assembly or Parishat of the Pāñchālas which counted among its members the distinguished scholars, the Brahmin Śvetaketu and the Prince Pravāhaṇa Jaivali. If we, however, proceed on the assumption that the places celebrated for sacrifices were also those celebrated for learning, then we can avail ourselves of some additional evidence. Nor is the assumption far from truth. It has been already shown how the culture of the Upanishads centred round the sacrifice which was made the occasion for learned debates in meetings of scholars well versed in the wisdom of the age. One of the most renowned places of such sacrifice in these ancient times was the far-famed Naimisha forest. The Ṛishis of the Naimisha forest and their sacrificial festivals are frequently mentioned in the literature of the period [e.g. *Kāth. Saṁ.*, x, 6; *Pañchav. Br.*, xxv, 6, 4; *Jaimi. Br.*, i, 363; *Kaush. Br.*, xxvi, 5; xxviii, 4; *Chhānd. Up.*, i, 2, 13, where the Udgātṛi of the Naimishīya sacrificers is mentioned, viz. Vaka Dālbhya]. It may be noted, too, in this connection that one of the sacrificers in this Naimisha forest was Śaunaka at whose sacrificial feast Sauti, the son of Vaiśampāyana, is said to have repeated before the assembly of Ṛishis the *Mahābhārata* recited by his father on an earlier occasion to Janamejaya (the second) together with the *Harivaṁśa*.