Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c16.7

c16.7

All these sacraments are intended to equip the finite self with a suitable physical body which might sustain the burden of the arduous pursuit of knowledge through life. The *Chhāndogya Upanishad* [viii, 15] thus describes the life of the ideal householder brought up under this system. “He who returns home from the family of his teacher, after the prescribed study of the Veda carried on in the time remaining over from his work for the teacher, and continues the private study of the Veda in his own household in a pure neighbourhood, trains up pious sons and pupils, subdues all his organs in the soul, and injures no living beings except for a sacred purpose—he, in truth, if he maintains this manner of life all his days, enters into the world of Brahman and does not return.” Even such a householder by way of further purification and progress has to retire from his household, renounce the world, and take to the forest to live the life of an anchorite in meditation, penances, fasts, living on food that is not the outcome of cultivation, and offering a few select sacrifices, then, in the last stage, performing the *prājāpatya* sacrifice at which he gives away all his meagre belongings as the sacrificial fee, he wanders about as a mendicant, conquering Desire and attaining Brahman.