Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c12.17

c12.17

**Religion still shaping Literature.** The brief and broad survey we have made of the literary activity of the period shows to what a large extent that activity was still determined and shaped by the dominant considerations of religious needs. The variety of literary productions was but answering the variety of religious interests developed. Intellectual life was but the handmaid of the life spiritual. It had no independent course of its own. The mind was but a means of ministering to the spirit. Much of the literature of the period, as we have already seen, is but founded essentially on the *Brāhmaṇas* and must be considered as their necessary supplement as a further advance in the path struck out by the latter in the direction of a rigid ritualism and formalism. The stimulus to the growth of this literature came, as has been explained, from the needs of the preservation and propagation of the religion which was being assailed by a new and rival religion working on more proper lines. As regards that part of Sūtra literature which has no direct connection with the *Brāhmaṇas*, we shall still find that it has a *direct* connection with religion and such of its aspects as are not treated of in the *Brāhmaṇas*. The *Gṛihya-sūtras*, equally with the *Dharma-sūtras*, only aimed at giving its final form and shape to the Brahmanical polity or system of social life expressive of the individuality of the Vedic civilization which was thus secured against all attacks levelled by heretical religions. Similarly, the very advances in linguistic research for which the age of the Sūtras is so much noted received their impetus from the needs of religious life. The various works making up the linguistic part of Sūtra literature will be found to be connected with one or other of the following necessities for safeguarding the interests of religion : firstly, there was the need to fix the text of the Vedic prayers; secondly, to establish a correct pronunciation and recitation; thirdly, to preserve the tradition of their origin; and lastly, when in course of time the literal sense of the old texts became more and more foreign to the current language, or the spoken dialects of the day, to take precautions whereby the original sense might be secured and established and not lost. It is thus that we find that even the linguistic Sūtras stand on the same basis on which the *Brāhmaṇas* themselves stand. While the *Brāhmaṇas* are concerned with the elucidation of the relation of the prayer to the sacrifice, the Sūtras are concerned with the form in which the prayer itself was drawn up