Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c12.s6.49

c12.s6.49

**Teacher’s control over spread of Knowledge.** We may now trace the further consequences and corollaries of this system of oral tradition under which the education was imparted. The deliberate adhesion to the principle of confining the sacred texts to memory instead of trusting them to writing produced certain characteristic results. In the first place, the spread of the sacred texts was completely controlled by those to the keeping of whose memory they were committed. Written works, like most other material things, are economic goods, traffic in which cannot be controlled. But the knowledge that is carried in the head is a monopoly of the knower and is devoid of that externality and materiality which would make it capable of appropriation by others. The spread of such knowledge is thus absolutely determined by the choice and sweet will of the knower who has the liberty to dictate on what terms he would exercise his choice. In the inner chambers of his soul have been stored up the literary treasures to which no one can have access unless he consents to unlock them with the key he holds. Thus the system could logically lay down conditions of admission which would eliminate all those who were not deemed to be sufficiently qualified, by aptitude, temperament, and character, to receive instruction in the sacred learning. Thus undeserving persons would be naturally and automatically excluded from the study of the sacred texts which stood in no fear of being misused, reviled, and desecrated. Thus the very conditions of teaching helped to make the teacher absolutely independent as regards the selection of his pupils.