Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c17.7

c17.7

**Principles underlying Castes and Āśramas.** If we may use a metaphor, the different Āśramas or stages of life are mutually related in the same way as the bud, the flower, and the fruit. The tender youth is first subjected to a process of rigorous discipline and training the aim of which is to purge him of all the impurities and imperfections, physical and moral, which obstruct the free operation of the vital principles of growth of the individual. Thus endowed with a sound mind in a sound body, the budding youth blossoms into a noble manhood which then reproduces itself in the householder's state and through the experience of an active life ripens into the fruit of mature wisdom and moral steadfastness which are dedicated in the third Āśrama of life to the advancement not of the *individual* but the *collective* life. The *Vānaprastha* must detach himself from personal interests centring in his individual home and family. He must wander from home into homelessness, cut himself off from his old moorings of self-interest to sail on the open main towards the Universal and the Absolute, and feel that "one touch of Nature which makes the whole world kin".