Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c17.69

c17.69

The conclusion to which all this evidence points is very well put by Hopkins: "How are we to interpret this? The Science of Arms required years of patient study. Is it conceivable that a boy otherwise occupied in physical training should by the age of sixteen be master of the special skill that gave him power on the battlefield and at the same time have found time to commit to memory even one Vedic collection? It is clear that the Law is later than the Epic on this point; and even there such knowledge is only to be assumed as desirable for the warrior in general. The active young knight and busy trader must have performed their duties toward the Veda in a very perfunctory way, if at all. The more reasonable supposition seems to me to be that, while in the early age there was no let to the desire of a young warrior if he wished to be Veda-learned, the conventional practices of his caste nevertheless constrained most of his attention to arms, and in his eight months of schooling (if even this, the later term of yearly study, be allowed for so early a time) he probably did nothing more than 'go over' the text of the Veda. It is absurd to believe that the memorizing of even one Vedic collection could have been attempted by such young warriors as those the Epic depicts. The practice must have been peculiar to the man of leisure, the priest. Indeed, it is not to this caste as a whole that the Epic ascribes such knowledge but the king alone is, theoretically, acquainted with the three-fold Veda. A sort of commutation of learning seems to be implied in the Sūtra period; for we read that the student, instead of learning all, may even as an alternative to the *anuvāka* (itself a concession) recite only 'as much as the Guru thinks best'; or 'only the first and last hymn of each seer'; or 'at the beginning of each hymn just one verse' "[*Śāṅkh.*, ii, 7, 22 ff.].¹