Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c13.20

c13.20

**Unworthy Pupils.** Unworthy pupils and teachers were not unknown. Some pupils found study too painful and difficult and abstained. Sometimes the rough manners of a teacher might also repel them [i, 4, 26, together with Patañjali's gloss]. Sometimes a pupil would not have the courage to face his teacher who would rebuke and dismiss him for some offence committed [ib., 28]. Or a pupil would not have the patience to complete his full period of studentship and leave it prematurely for the life of ease of the householder without his teacher's permission or the performance of the concluding purificatory bath. For such a person the standing contemptuous epithet was *Khaṭvārūḍha*, i.e. one who begins sleeping on a cot without being entitled to it by a completed studentship when he ought to sleep on the ground [ii, 1, 26, with Patañjali's gloss]. Sometimes a pupil would change teachers and schools too frequently, in which case the contemptuous epithet, *Tīrthakāka*, would be applied to him, because he is as fickle as a crow that does not stop long at a place of pilgrimage [ii, 1, 41, with Patañjali's gloss]. Other contemptuous epithets are contemplated in another Sūtra of Pāṇini [vi, 2, 69] with reference to an *antevāsin* and a *māṇava* when they become pupils for reprehensible motives. As examples the *Kāśikā* mentions the term *Kumārī-Dākshāḥ*, which means those who study the works, or make themselves pupils, of Daksha for the sake of girls, and also the term *Bhikshā-māṇava* which applies to a person entering upon studentship for the sake of the proceeds from begging it brings. Similar terms mentioned by Patañjali are *Odana-Pāṇinīyāḥ*, i.e. those who become pupils or study the work of Pāṇini only for the sake of securing boiled rice, *Ghṛita-Raudhīyas* (the Raudhīyas desirous of *ghṛita*), and *Kambala-Chārāyaṇīyas* (the Chārāyaṇīyas desirous of blankets) [see Patañjali on Vārttika 6 to i, 1, 73 and *Kāśikā* on vi, 2, 69]. Thus there was not always the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, and deviations from the ideal were so common or general that special epithets were evolved requiring grammatical explanations for their formation. Be it, however, considered that students pursuing studies for worldly advantages accruing therefrom earned a legitimate social opprobrium, and this in a manner testifies to the strict insistence upon the true ideals of studentship. Nowadays most persons acquire knowledge because it brings *odana*, *ghṛita*, and *kambala* but escapes the application of epithets expressive of social censure.