Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c15.36

c15.36

**Prādhyayanam.** There is again a reference to cases where something is proposed to be given away for which there are many deserving competitors. In such cases *Prādhyayanam*, i.e. ability in reciting the Veda would be adopted as the standard for determining superiority of learning. Some take *Prādhyayanam* to be not superior recitation of the Veda but "the excellent lecture of it", such as "the recital of one *Śākhā* of the Veda in one day". It may also mean recital of the Purāṇas and the like. As regards intellectual contests, the commentators draw attention to the fact that sometimes a prize may be previously announced for victory or "display of superior learning", or sometimes though no such prize may be offered the victor may win his due reward from a rich man in the assembly moved to make a gift by "the satisfaction afforded to him by overcoming an adversary in disputation". Such kinds of spontaneous literary patronage must have been of very usual occurrence in the academic life of the country when they have been noticed in the law-books as constituting a source of income to the learned men. Wealth could always be depended upon to come forward in support of learning. Again, "a fee for answering a question in casuistry (*praśna*)" is sometimes explained as "a reward received on account of the gratification afforded by the solution of a question. For instance, a man possessing immense knowledge attends a universal monarch and discusses a question proposed by him; though he do not gain the victory (for even in controversy a conqueror of worlds is invincible) yet, spreading lustre over the assembly, he receives a reward from the monarch". Regarding *Prādhyayanam*, some commentators take objection to its meaning as merely "reading the Veda with transcendent ability". Their view is that "the wages of mere transcribers, and generally the fee received from the audience for reading the Veda, Purāṇas, and the like, without transcendent skill in poetry, and in explaining the sense of poems: this, and other similar gains, according to Chaṇḍeśvara and the rest, are not the acquisition of science. In fact in all cases whatsoever wherein superior skill is required the wealth gained is technically denominated the acquisition of science. Otherwise it is simply wealth acquired by the man himself". The fees from *Prādhyayanam* (whatever may be the right meaning of the term) regarded as a source of income to the learned point without doubt to that remarkable agency of popular education under which readings in the Vedas, Purāṇas, and other sacred literature were organized by means of circles of competent scholars who specialized in such readings before the larger assemblies of the common people.