Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c11.s6.23

c11.s6.23

We have now concluded our account of education in the *Brāhmaṇa* period, and it may be well to sum up here some of its general and principal features. The Brāhmaṇas were the real intellectual leaders controlling education. We must assume among them a very stirring intellectual life which really accounts for the supremacy established and exercised by them over the rest of the people. Wide was the scope of their intellectual interests and activities; it embraced the whole range of Brahmanical theology, extending in like manner to questions of worship, dogma, and philosophical speculation, all of which were closely interwoven with each other. Not merely did they teach fixed groups of students settled in their homes as "*internal*" students (to use a modern expression), but they also had to admit "*external*" students pursuing advanced ("post-graduate") studies after completing their normal period of studentship. There were circles formed around them of *travelling* scholars, who made pilgrimages from one teacher to another according as they were attracted and led by the fame of the special learning they were seeking. Nor did the military caste hold aloof from the intellectual activities of the time when they had already earned for themselves a time of repose from external warfare. Neither did the women, who are found to be partners of their husbands in every department of life. We have here, indeed, a close correspondence to the scholastic period of the Middle Ages in Europe; "sovereigns whose courts form the centres of intellectual life; Brāhmaṇas who, with lively emulation, carry on their inquiries into the highest questions the human mind can propound; women who with enthusiastic ardour plunge into the mysteries of speculation impressing and astonishing men by the depth and loftiness of their opinions. . . As to the quality of their solutions (of philosophical problems) and the value of all these inquiries generally, that is another matter: . . It is only the striving and the effort which ennobles the character of any such period" [Weber, *Ind. Lit.*, p. 22].