Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c12.2

c12.2

**Changing Conditions.** We now leave the period of the *Brāhmaṇas* and come to that of the *Sūtras* which introduce us to new types and forms of literary activity called forth by the requirements of the times, by new social, religious, and political conditions. The rise of the Sūtra literature is connected with the necessities of self-defence and self-preservation of the old Vedic religion. We have already seen how in the first or *Chhandas* period the Vedic bards or Rishis, by giving free and full utterance to their inner intuitions and revelations, their inspired thoughts and sentiments, were giving to the Indians a new world of religious, moral, and political ideas; how in the second or *Mantra* period all that rich harvest was being garnered and preserved; and how the literary activity of the third or *Brāhmaṇa* period chiefly occupied itself in systematizing and interpreting the precious poetry of the earlier age which had already become unintelligible and sacred. The result was the growth of a vast and varied literature of commentaries round the original kernel of religion which none but specialists could extract and unfold, of a complicated system of theology and ceremonial of which the knowledge became more and more the exclusive property of particular families (of priests) in which it became hereditary.