Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c27.2

c27.2

**Story of Nāgasena.** The account of the education of the Brahman Nāgasena given in the *Milinda Pañha* [i, 22-6] illustrates the principal features of the systems of both Brahmanical and Buddhist education as they prevailed in its times (second century B.C.). When Nāgasena was seven years old his father sent him on for his education befitting a Brahman to a Brahman teacher. The teaching fee was paid in advance instead of being paid at the conclusion of the studentship under the usual rules. The amount of the fee was a thousand pieces. The subjects of study are classified into (a) *Sikkhā* or the three Vedas, and (b) *Arts* by which the subjects other than the Vedas are meant. Nāgasena under his teacher's instruction achieved the mastery of the Vedas which meant that he "had learnt the three Vedas by heart, could intone them correctly, had understood their meaning, could fix the right place of each particular verse, and had grasped the mysteries they contained", so that "there arose in him an intuitive insight into the Vedas, with a knowledge of their lexicography, of their prosody, of their grammar, and of the legends attaching to the characters in them" and he became a skilled philologist, grammarian, and casuist. Considering the range of his learning his father had to admit that there was nothing more which a Brahman had to learn. Nāgasena's thirst for knowledge was not, however, allayed by Vedic learning. It drove him to Buddhist studies for which he approached the Venerable Rohaṇa who lived at his hermitage at Vattaniya. But Rohaṇa would not admit the boy to his instruction unless he entered the Order. His parents permitted him to enter the Order for the study of Buddhist Literature because "they thought that when he had learned it he would come back again". Then Rohaṇa, considering in what he should first instruct him, whether "in the Discourses (Suttanta) or in the deeper things of the faith (Abhidhamma), decided upon teaching him the Abhidhamma first. Nāgasena soon mastered and knew by heart the whole of the Abhidhamma, i.e. the Dhammasaṅgaṇi, the Vibhaṅga with its eighteen chapters, the Dhātukathā with its fourteen books, the Puggala Paññatti with its six divisions, the Kathā Vatthu, the Yamaka with its ten divisions, and the Paṭṭhāna with its twenty-four chapters.