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Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c6: Prologue

Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c6

Language
English

Contents

Prologue

I. Background

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A singular feature of ancient Indian or Hindu Civilization is that it has been moulded and shaped in the course of its history more by religious than by political, or economic, influences. Religion, as the ancient Hindus understood it, practically dominated every sphere of their national life. The fundamental principles of social, political, and economic life were welded into a comprehensive theory which is called Religion in Hindu thought. Practical attitudes thus followed theoretic orientations. The total configuration of ideals, practices, and conduct is called Dharma (Religion, Virtue, or Duty) in this ancient tradition. Thus it is Religion that gave its laws to the social life and organization of the ancient Hindus, and regulated even their economic activities and pursuits. In politics, its influence has been no less profound and pervasive, though not so apparent, and explains much of the political history of the ancient Hindus. From the very start, they came, under the influence of their religious ideas, to conceive of their country as less a geographical and material than a cultural or a spiritual possession, and to identify, broadly speaking, the country with their culture. The Country was their Culture and the Culture their Country, the true Country of the Spirit, the ‘invisible church of culture’ not confined within physical bounds. India thus was the first country to rise to the conception of an extra-territorial nationality and naturally became the happy home of different races, each with its own ethno-psychic endowment, and each carrying its particular racial traditions and institutions. The political and social reality for Hindus is not geographical, nor ethnic, but a culture-pattern. Country and patriotism expand, as ideals and ways of life receive acquiescence. Thus, from the very dawn of its history has this Country of the Spirit ever expanded in extending circles, Brahmarshideśa, Brahmāvarta, Āryāvarta, Bhāratavarsha, or Jambudvīpa, and even a Greater India beyond its geographical boundaries. In different ages of its history has it thus had different territorial embodiments, but never any territorial limits. This domination of politics by religion is also responsible for the initial and fundamental difficulty of its history. The problem of India has been the problem of the world, so to speak, the finding of a workable compromise between different nationalities and social systems, and is, therefore, yet to be solved. But the lines on which it may be solved are perhaps more clearly indicated in Hindu than in any other polity. In political organization, India has believed more in group-life which has received full scope throughout. It has had a most exuberant and luxuriant growth on the Indian soil, illustrating in the manifold forms of its organization all the vital and natural modes and forms of human association. India, indeed, thus offers the best study in group-types, and in group-organization in which is now being increasingly found in the West "the best solution of popular government". [See Miss Follet's *The New State : Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government* (Longmans, London)].

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The revolt against modern democracies is not mere party politics or expediency but Nature's own revenge against the violation of her laws by Man in his political arrangements. The Group has not been given its proper place in the organization of individuals into the State. The democracy of to-day stresses alternately the Group and the Individual. Hindu Thought effects a happy compromise by placing the worth of the real Personality above all things. The concept of Personality is the point of meeting of the social group and the biological individual. Emphasis on the personality-values then brings within the purview of politics biological facts, social traditions, and the pattern of inner culture. The Indian Polity, recognizing the claims of the Group as the necessary and inevitable intermediary formation between the individuals and the sovereign central authority of the State, points to that principle of comprehension by which a true, stable, and living League of Nations can be organized and the state of war between them abolished. Thus has India sought to spiritualize her politics by taking stand upon its broader and truer foundations.

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Similarly, in the sphere of economic life and interests, the free choice of occupations, or the movement of labour, horizontal or vertical, was subordinated to the choice of the ideals and ends of life. Castes determined Crafts or vice versa. Some occupations were approved for certain castes and condemned for others. Thus economic life was controlled by religion as man’s supreme interest and concern, and was not left to be moulded freely by the operation of natural laws. For religion or *Dharma* reflects the wider outlook of the group and its material needs.

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The entire ancient Indian social organization, too, was planned on the principle that it should, in all its classes, ranks, and grades, offer the best scope for the development of the individual as its centre and chief concern, though it is possible to argue that the means adopted have not always shown themselves to be as sound as the ends. In a word, the entire Hindu view of life is characterized by its instinctive ‘choice of realities’ of a particular order, the ideal and the spiritual as distinguished from the physical and temporal. Indeed, contrary to the generally accepted view, the Hindu thinkers are always anxious to translate nebulous ideals into determinate concepts, vague social attitudes into specific rules of conduct, and to envisage the group-life not as an indefinite æsthetic or romantic reality but as a system of laws. In the same way, the process of adjustment to the group-life is not left to chance, to the raw impulses of the individual, or to the changing patterns of *mores* and fashions. The ideals of the group, its scheme of values, and the realities that the group-tradition conceives as supreme, must be clearly reflected in the mind of the individual. The end can only be achieved through a course of training that reshapes the psychic and bodily life of man.

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Nowhere is this distinctive tendency of Hindu thought more manifest than in the sphere of learning and education. Learning in India through the ages had been prized and pursued not for its own sake, if we may so put it, but for the sake, and as a part, of religion. It was sought as the means of salvation or self-realization, as the means to the highest end of life, viz. *Mukti* or Emancipation. The result is that it is Religion that creates Literature in India and wields it as an instrument for its own purposes, a vehicle of its expression. It fixes its very body and form and determines the course of its evolution. As Macdonell puts it [*Sanskrit Literature*, p. 39], since the birth of the oldest Vedic poetry, we find Indian Literature, for a period of more than a thousand years, bearing “an exclusively religious stamp; even those latest productions of the Vedic age which cannot be called directly religious are yet meant to further religious ends. This is, indeed, implied by the term *Vedic*, for *Veda*, primarily signifying *Knowledge* (from root *Vid*, to know), designates 'sacred lore' as a branch of literature. Besides this general sense, the word has also the restricted meaning of 'sacred book'."

II. Theory

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Ancient Indian Education is also to be understood as being ultimately the outcome of the Indian theory of knowledge and a part of the corresponding scheme of life and values. That scheme takes full account of the fact that Life includes Death and the two form the whole truth. This gives a particular angle of vision, a sense of perspective and proportion in which the material and the moral, the physical and spiritual, the perishable and permanent interests and values of life are clearly defined and strictly differentiated.

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Of all the peoples of the world the Hindu is the most impressed and affected by the fact of death as the central fact of life. He cannot get away from the fact that while Man proposes, God disposes. Therefore, he feels he cannot take life seriously, and scheme for it, without a knowledge of the whole scheme of creation. He takes the biological vital process in the context of the total life-situation, comprising the inner self into the depths of which he can descend by means of contemplation (*svarūpānubhūti*), the ideal self that he can discover through intellection (*manana*), and the social self into the laws of which tradition initiates him. Thus he devotes himself to a study of the fundamental truths of life and does not care for half-truths and intermediate truths. His one aim in life is to solve the problem of death by achieving a knowledge of the whole truth of which Life and Death are parts and phases. He perceives that it is the individual that dies, and not the whole or the Absolute. Thus the Individual must merge himself in the Universal to escape from the sense of change, decay, and dissolution. The Absolute is not subject to change. Individuation is Death, a lapse from the Absolute. Individuation results from the pursuit of objective knowledge, and this has to be stopped. Thus the aim of Education is *Chitta-vritti-nirodha*, the inhibition of those activities of the mind by which it gets connected with the world of matter or objects.

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Hindu Thought takes up the position that the individual as conceived in the context of social life, and the laws of the State, is essentially a psychological and biological fact. But the individual, in order that his ultimate datum of personality may be understood, must be viewed from other perspectives, those of his elemental nature, his potentiality for growth and transformation, his self-sufficiency, his capacity for effecting harmony between conflicting trends of impulses. Such a view of the self will necessarily take it out of its usual habitat. It means that the normal functions in terms of which the biological self ties itself to its material home must be checked so as to lay bare the core and kernel of one's being, the true self, the naked personality, stripped of the envelope with which it is shrouded by the accretions of passing impulses and emotions. When the personality is thus denuded of its material and social trappings, five planes of vital and psychic tendencies reveal themselves. These are called, in the writings of the Hindu thinkers, the five *Koshas* (sheaths). Normal worldly life sets up barriers between them so that they manifest themselves one at a time. The purpose of Hindu Culture seems to be (1) to disclose the personality as a continuum, rather than as a stratified structure, and (2) thus to make the human self the meeting point of Heaven and Earth. As the Upanishadic text says: "He drew out the lustre of the heavenly fire and filled the earth" (Agnerjyotirnichāyya pṛithivyā adhyābharat). Thus the inhibitions that daily life necessitates, the processes of 'rationalization', symbolization, dramatization, and other kinds of distortions, must be righted in the course of spiritual culture.

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The individual's supreme duty is thus to achieve his expansion into the Absolute, his self-fulfilment, for he is a potential God, a spark of the Divine.

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Education must aid in this self-fulfilment, and not in the acquisition of mere objective knowledge. It is more concerned with the subject than the object, the inner than the outer world. But there is a method in this madness. The theory is that it is hopeless to get at the knowledge of the whole in and through its parts, through the individual objects making up the universe. The right way is directly to seek the source of all life and knowledge, and not to acquire knowledge piecemeal by the study of objects. The pursuit of objective knowledge is thus not the chief concern of this Education. When the mind is withdrawn from the world of matter, and does not indulge in individuation, Omniscience, the Knowledge of the Whole, dawns on it. Individuation shuts out omniscience. Individuation is concretion of the Mind. The Mind takes the form of the object in knowing it. It limits itself to the object, like the water rained down from the clouds limiting itself in a tank. Thus Individuation is Bondage. It limits vision, knowledge, omniscience. Perception of Life in the perspective of the whole is Mukti, Emancipation. The individual must achieve his emancipation, his escape from bondage, *saṁsāra*, the ills which flesh is heir to, from disease, decline, death, desire, and its satisfaction, recurring in a vicious circle of birth and death, to use the Buddha’s words.

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In its indifference to objective knowledge, the system assumes that the Universe is not limited to what is revealed by the mere bodily senses which man shares with the lower animals; that man’s faculties of perception are not necessarily limited to the five senses; and that mental life is not entirely bound up with or completely dependent upon what is called the cerebral mechanism or the brain. It is, therefore, considered as the main business of Education to open up other avenues of knowledge than the mere brain or the outer physical senses. It seeks to educate the mind itself as the creative principle in man, the creative principle of his culture and civilization. The Mind is its supreme concern and objective, the chief subject of its treatment. It seeks to train the Mind as the medium and instrument of knowledge, transform the entire psychic organism, overhaul the mental apparatus itself, rather than to fill the mind with a store of learned lumber, objective knowledge. It addresses itself more to the principle of knowing, the roots from which knowledge springs and grows, than to the objective content of knowledge. The chase counts more than the game.

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Its method, therefore, is the method of *Yoga*, the science of sciences and the art of arts in the Hindu system, the science and art of the reconstruction of self by discipline and meditation. *Yoga* is defined as *Chitta-Vritti-Nirodha*. It is to stop the functioning of Mind as the avenue or vehicle of objective knowledge, the inhibition of individuation. The theory is that the Mind, seeking external knowledge, contacts, and is contaminated and transformed by Matter, and communicates this contamination to the Soul, Self, or Purusha, who thus enters into bondage. The question is, How to break this bondage and escape from the clutches of Matter. By simply cutting off the inflow of Matter upon Mind, checking the materialization of the Mind and Soul, for the Soul, too, in Milton's words of insight, "embodies and imbrutes." Thus Education is a process of control of Mind, to drive it down to its deeper layers, its subterranean depths, not ruffled by the ripples of the surface, the infinite distractions of the material world by which the Mind wears itself out in fatigue. When the Mind is thus led to rest in itself, and fall back upon its innate strength and resources, and does not lose itself in the pursuit of the knowledge of individual objects, there dawns and bursts forth on the Mind the totality of knowledge, Omni-science, as already stated.

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Bergson also has stressed this point and insists on the withdrawal of the Mind from the world of Matter which "imposes upon it its spatial forms, and thus arrests the natural creativity, inwardness, and suppleness of conscious life". For, as he says, "Consciousness, in shaping itself into Intelligence, that is to say, in concentrating itself on Matter, seems to externalize itself" It is only when the Self "brackets" itself out from the realm of things that the psychic processes regain their normal ways. Such withdrawal, says Bergson, permits the fusion of the varied functions of life and mind into a unitary and concrete process—the Intuition. He further points out that "the individual's consciousness, delving downwards, reveals to him, the deeper he goes, his original personality, to which he may cling as something solid, as means of escape from a life of impulse, caprice, and regret. In our innermost selves, we may discover an equilibrium more desirable than the one on the surface. Certain aquatic plants, as they rise to the surface, are ceaselessly jostled by the current; their leaves, meeting above the water, interlace, thus imparting to them stability above. But still more stable are the roots which, firmly planted in the earth, support them from below" [*Morality and Religion*, p. 6]. The Upanishads also have a similar conception in which the Universe is likened to a peepul tree rooted in the universal consciousness (*ūrddhamūlam*), spreading its branches and leaves as the life and the phenomenal world (*guṇa-pravṛiddhā vishaya-pravālāḥ* . . . Karmānubandhīni manushya-loke).

III. Plan

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As the individual is the chief concern and centre of this Education, Education also is necessarily individual. It is an intimate relationship between the teacher and the pupil. The relationship is inaugurated by a religious ceremony called *Upanayana*. It is not like the admission of a pupil to the register of a school on his payment of the prescribed fee. The spiritual meaning of *Upanayana*, and its details inspired by that meaning, are elaborated in many texts and explained below in the proper place. By Upanayana, the teacher, "holding the pupil within him as in a womb, impregnates him with his spirit, and delivers him in a new birth." The pupil is then known as a *Dvija*, "born afresh" in a new existence, "twice-born" [*Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa*, xi, 5, 4]. The education that is thus begun is called by the significant term *Brahmacharya*, indicating that it is a mode of life, a system of practices.

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This conception of education moulds its external forms. The pupil must find the teacher. He must live with him as a member of his family and is treated by him in every way as his son. The school is a natural formation, not artificially constituted. It is the home of the teacher. It is a hermitage, amid sylvan surroundings, beyond the distractions of urban life, functioning in solitude and silence. The constant and intimate association between teacher and taught is vital to education as conceived in this system. The pupil is to imbibe the inward method of the teacher, the secrets of his efficiency, the spirit of his life and work, and these things are too subtle to be taught. The same principle also holds in the sphere of industrial education. As will be seen below, the apprentice must elect to live with the master craftsman to learn the secrets of his work, assimilate his spirit and method, which are not revealed in any formal manner.

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India has believed in the domestic system in both Industry and Education, and not in the mechanical methods of large production in institutions and factories turning out standardized articles. Artistic work is the product of human skill and not of machine. The making of man depends on the human factor. It depends on individual attention and treatment to be given by the teacher. Here the personal touch, the living relationship between the pupil and teacher make education. The pupil belongs to the teacher and not to an institution or the abstraction called the school. A modern school teaches pupils by "classes", and not as individuals with their differences. Is it possible to think of a common treatment of patients each of whom has his own ailment? While it cannot be applied to the diseases of the body that can be visualized, how can it be applied in handling invisible, intangible, and sometimes intractable material, different minds and moral conditions?¹ Certainly, Education is the last subject to be "mechanized" even in a modern socialist State.

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¹ That advanced educational thought in the West is seeking reform in this direction may be illustrated by a recent donation of the American philanthropist, Mr. Harkness, added to the millions of dollars with which he has endowed his old school, the Phillips Academy at Exeter, in the State of New Hampshire. The donation has been made on the condition that there should be on the staff of the school at least one teacher for every ten boys. A leading journal commenting on this singular gift states: "Mr. Harkness, like many thoughtful Americans, is apprehensive that in the large numbers flooding into the higher educational institutions of the U.S.A., there was a danger of mass-production, and a loss of all that was of the highest value in education. As Wordsworth said: 'Numbers swamp humanity.'"

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But there are deeper psychological reasons for this individual treatment in Education. The investigations of Psychologists like Jung, Jaensch, Spranger, and Kretschmer point out that individuals divide themselves into a number of personality-types in accordance with the trend of their usual behaviour-patterns and the ends they seek. These also determine their social and intellectual activities and their vocations, which will vary with the types to which they correspond. This, therefore, makes individual treatment of pupils essential in education. A common scheme may economize effort and expense, but it will not make for maturation of the self which depends on the uniqueness of personal equipment and freedom of choice, factors which are ignored in such a scheme.

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Further, social psychology has proved that every individual has his own equipment of emotions, action-attitudes, and ways of thinking, which is the gift of the traditions and the social environment in which he is brought up. These can be disturbed only at the risk of severe derangement of the personality. Each scheme of training must, therefore, take into account the concrete individual, a product of biological gifts and social heritage. A neglect of this basic situation renders the process of education less fruitful, and sometimes even risky to the personality.

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The investigations of Haggerty, Nash, and Goodenough show further that the educational status and vocation of the parents have a significant correlation with the level of capacity of the children, as indicated by the Intelligence Quotient. For instance, the children of professional parents or of those of a higher academic standing possess, on the whole, a higher value of *I.Q.* The implications of such facts cannot be ignored in schemes of national education.

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There are a few other fundamental pedagogic principles involved in this educational condition of intimate relationship between the teacher and his pupil. The Guru takes the place of what Freud defines as the Super-Ego of the individual pupil, i.e. the embodiment of the ideals and traditions in which he is brought up. Every individual is subject to an innate conflict between a sense of what he *is* and what he *ought* to be. He imbibes the ideals and traditions of his society, which regulate his life from the outside, or from the plane of the unconscious. In both cases, he feels himself to be the passive instrument of social, or mysterious forces. The ideals, however, are sometimes assimilated as parts of his conscience or Super-Ego, when his actions come under the regulation of his own self, though not without a conflict between the different parts of his nature. This inner conflict is resolved by the Guru, to whom, a different personality, the pupil can project his Super-Ego. The ideals can now more easily enforce themselves, as there is no longer now any loophole for ignoring them, as one could in the matter of one's own thoughts suggesting them. Bergson also points out that man obeys a moral obligation against his will, yielding to the pressure or propulsive force of its social consequences. But he will obey it naturally when its appeal comes from "a Great personality incarnating morality" which is not relative but "complete or absolute", "as the multiplicity and generality of its maxims merge more completely into a man's unity and individuality" (*Morality and Religion*, p. 24).

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There is another moral factor involved in this intimate relationship between two personalities. The process of sharing experiences with his Guru prevents the tendency to repression in the pupil. Thus the inner life can grow in a normal manner under this system.

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Then, again, the pupil's membership of the family of his Guru constitutes a constant stimulus to the ideals to which he is dedicated, while it also operates as a protective sheath, shutting out unwholesome influences. It operates as a restraining force. Again, the novice feels that he is not lost in a crowd. He feels one of a family where he has a distinct place. Hence there grows in him a sense of personal worth and of placid individuality which a healthy social group always engenders.

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Apart from the special educative value of the teacher's home as the school, there is the factor of its environment or setting as an integral part of the scheme. The school is set in sylvan surroundings. The pupil's first daily duty is to walk to the woods, cut and collect fuel, and fetch it home for tending the sacred Fire. The Upanishads frequently mention pupils approaching their teacher with fuel in hand, as a token that he is ready to serve the teacher and tend his household fire. The *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa* explains (xi, 5, 4, 5) that the Brahmachārī "puts on fuel to enkindle the mind with fire, with holy lustre". A profound spiritual and cultural significance attaches to this worship of Agni by the offering of choice objects and oblations. It is the visible image and reminder of the primordial cosmic sacrifice at which the Supreme Being whom the Veda calls the *Virāṭ-Purusha* (Rigveda, *Purusha-Sūkta*, x, 90), offered up His infinite body as the material and the foundation for the construction of the Universe. It was an act of supreme self-immolation by which the Universe is created and sustained. "Man is created after God's image" and is subject to the same law of being which governs creation. He, too, is the creator of his system which depends on his self-sacrifice. The ceremony of Agnihotra brings home to the pupil the reality of religion in the form of sacrifice.

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The pupil's next duty was to tend the teacher's house and cattle. Tending the house was training the pupil in self-help, the dignity of labour, of menial service for his teacher and the student-brotherhood. Tending cattle was education through craft as a part of the highest liberal education. The craft selected is the primary industry of India. The school and the homestead centre round the cow whom the Indian counts as his second mother whose milk nourishes the child and is the best food even for the grown-up. Three acres and a cow has been India's economic plan through the ages. The pupils received a valuable training in the love of the cow and the industry of rearing up cattle and dairy-farming, with all the other advantages it gave of outdoor life and robust physical exercise, which was more fruitful in every way than the modern barren games of Football and Hockey. The Chhāndogya Upanishad tells of the great sage Satyakāma Jābāla who in his boyhood was apprenticed by his teacher to take charge of his cattle whose number grew under his guardianship from 400 to 1,000. And this training in industry was the foundation of the highest knowledge for which the Ṛishi was known. The Bṛihadāraṇyaka also tells of Ṛishi Yājñavalkya, the foremost philosopher of the times, good enough, with his band of pupils, to drive away home from the court of Janaka 1,000 cows the king bestowed on him as the reward of his learning.

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That education was not exclusively theoretical and academic but was related to a craft as a part of liberal education may also be seen in the following description of the home of a Rigvedic Rishi (*Rv.* ix, 112) :

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"We different men have different aptitudes and pursuits (dhiyo vi vratāni). The carpenter (Takshā) seeks something that is broken ; the physician (Bhishag) a patient (rutam) ; the priest (Brahma) someone who will perform sacrifice (Sunvantam).

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"I am a poet (Kāruh), my father is a physician, and my mother a grinder of corn (upala-prakshiṇī)."

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Here we find the highest philosophy yoked to the humble craft of grinding corn in a Rishi and his mother, while his father was pursuing the useful art of healing as a physician. Therefore, the highest education was quite consistent with manual and vocational training to give a practical turn to human nature, and training to deal with objects and the physical environment.

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Another duty of the Brahmachārī is to go out on a daily round of begging. It was not begging for himself but for the support of his school. Its educative value is explained in the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa* (xi, 3, 3, 5), which points out that it is meant to produce in the pupil a spirit of humanity and renunciation. But its moral effects may be examined more closely. First, the contrast between his own life and that of the world at large brings home to him the value of the scheme for which he stands, which he will now all the more try to consolidate. This makes for a more complete organization of the personality, a deeper loyalty to his system. Further, the daily duty of begging makes the Ego less and less assertive, and, with it, all unruly desires and passions, which do not shoot forth, as their roots wither. Thus there is reached a greater balance of the inner life. A sense of balance and harmony further brings out the contrast between the behaviour of his own group and that of the men of the world, and this further confirms his faith in his own group or order.

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Again, an acquaintance through begging with worldly life and its trials makes him realize more vividly the security of his own life. Lastly, begging makes the pupil feel how unattached he is to any ties, and a sense of independence contributing to a sense of self-hood. It is like a ritual for the cultivation of impersonal relations in life. This contact of the recluse with the world is a valuable corrective to the exaggerated subjectivity of isolated meditative life in the hermitage. Isolation and intercourse thus lead to a higher synthesis of the inner and the outer, Purusha and Prakṛiti, Self and the World.

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In such a scheme of Education, mere study as such occupies a very subsidiary place. The Upanishads mention three steps of education called (1) *Śravaṇa*, (2) *Manana*, and (3) *Nididhyāsana* [*Bṛi. Upa.*, ii, 4, 5]. *Śravaṇa* is listening to words or texts as they are uttered by the teacher. It is the system of oral tradition by which India has built up her whole culture through the ages; the system called *Gurupāramparya* or *Sampradāya* which Udyotakara (in his *Nyāya-Vārttika*) defines as ‘the uninterrupted ideal succession of pupils and teachers, by which knowledge is conserved and transmitted’ (Sampradāyo nāma Siṣhyopādhyāyasaṁbandhasya avichchhedena śāstraprāptiḥ). Thus the Book of Knowledge in those days was called *Śruti*, “what was heard.” This character of Knowledge also fixed its form known as *Mantra* or *Sūtra* by which the maximum of meaning was compressed within the minimum of words, of which the crowning example is the letter *OM* containing within itself a world of meaning. Knowledge did not then exist in the form of MSS. which could be stored up in a library like household furniture, for knowledge was the furniture of the mind, while the teacher himself was the living and walking library of those days. For thousands of years, even up to the time of Kumārila (*c.* eighth century A.D.), it was considered sacrilege to reduce the Veda to writing, for learning was not reading but realization, and knowledge was to be in the blood, as an organic part of one’s self. Another point to be noted in this connection is that *Śabda* or Sound by itself has its own potency and value, apart from its sense, and its intrinsic attributes, its rhythm, and vibrations should be captured. *Śabda* is Brahma. “The Word is God.”

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In accordance with the high aim of this Education, the achievement of the supreme, saving Knowledge, Śaṅkara in his *Viveka-Chūḍāmaṇi* defines *Śravaṇa* as listening to the instruction of the teacher and knowing from him the primary truth that the Self is to be differentiated fron Non-Self appearing in various forms. To identify Self with Non-Self is Ignorance, causing Bondage. Bondage is removed by Knowledge.

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Hearing of texts and words uttered by the teacher is to be followed by the process of *Manana*, deliberation, reflection on the topic taught, but it results only in an intellectual apprehension of its meaning. Therefore, there is the stage of learning, called *Nididhyāsana* or Meditation, by which can be attained the realization of truth. As the *Muṇḍaka* points out (ii, 2, 24) " a mere intellectual apprehension of truth, a reasoned conviction, is not sufficient, though it is necessary as the first stage as a sort of mark at which to shoot ". The distinction between the intellectual apprehension of truth and its realization may be well explained in the words of Gautama describing his own training for his attainment of Buddhahood or Enlightenment. His first teacher was Ālāra Kālāma who was so used to meditation that " he would not, sitting on the roadside, be conscious of a caravan of 500 carts rattling past him ". He taught Gautama the doctrine of *Nirvāṇa*. " Very speedily," says Gautama, " I learned the doctrine, and so far as concerns uttering with mouth and lips the words, ' I know, I understand,' I, and others with me, knew the word of wisdom and the ancient lore. We speedily acquired this doctrine so far as concerns lip-profession. Then the thought occurred to me, ' when Ālāra Kālāma declares : Having myself realized, and known this doctrine, I abide in the attainment thereof, it cannot all be a mere profession of faith ; surely, Ālāra Kālāma sees and knows this doctrine.' " Gautama states that very soon he achieved the stage at which he was able ' to abide in a realization and knowledge of the doctrine '.

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This realization of truth is described as *Darśana* or ' perception ' of Truth. *Ātmā vā are drashṭavyaḥ* in the passage quoted above means that the Ātman or the Self must be " seen ". The theory is that seeing is believing, and so the reality of the diversity of the material objective world, in which we believe, because we *see* it, is to be pitted against the other reality of unity, which must be equally *seen*. The *Ātman* must be as much the subject of immediate perception as the material world of diversity. Then alone will the one result of immediate perception be wiped off and replaced by the other. At the Congress of Philosophers that met at the court of King Janaka of Videha (the world's first Philosophical Congress), the philosopher Ushasta put to Yājñavalkya the question : " when any one says that is an ox, that is a horse ', it is thereby pointed out. Point out to me the revealed, unveiled Brahma, the Ātman which dwells in everything. The Ātman which dwells in everything—What is that, O Yājñavalkya ? " (*Bṛi. Upa.*)

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*Nididhyāsana* represents the highest stage of meditation which, with reference to Brahma or the One Reality, has been defined as " Vijātīya-dehādipratyayavirahita advitīya-vastu-sajātīya-pravāhaḥ, as the steady stream (pravāha) of consciousness of the One, undisturbed by the slightest consciousness of the Many, or any material object, contradictory to the sense of the One or the Soul". The Upanishads prescribe certain preliminary exercises in meditation to lead up to its final stage. These are called *Upāsanās* giving training in contemplation.

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The situation is best summed up in the words that Nārada addresses to Sanatkumāra (Chhāndogya, vii, 1), which throw light not merely on the methods of this education but also on the then subjects of study.

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Nārada states that he had studied subjects like the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Sāmaveda, the Atharva-Veda as fourth, Itihāsa-Purāṇa as the fifth Veda, Grammar (called *Vedānāṁ Vedam*, 'the Veda of Vedas'), Biology (*Bhūta-Vidyā*), Arithmetic (*Rāśi*), Divination (*Daiva*), Chronology (*Nidhi*), Dialectics (*Vākovākyam* = *Tarkaśāstram*), Politics (*Ekāyana*), Theology (*Deva-Vidyā*), or Exegetics (= *Nirukta*, as explained by Śaṅkara), the Doctrine of Prayer (*Brahma-Vidyā*), which Śaṅkara, however, explains as the Vedāṅgas of *Śikshā* (Phonetics), *Kalpa* (Ceremonial) and *Chhandas* (Metrics, Prosody), Necromancy (*Pitrya*), Military Science (*Kshatra-Vidyā*), Astronomy (*Nakshatra-Vidyā*), study of Snake-Venoms (*Sarpa-vidyā*), and the Fine Arts (*Devajana-Vidyā*) explained by Śaṅkara to mean *Nṛitya* (Dancing), *Gīta*, *Vādya* (Music Vocal and Instrumental) and other Arts (Śilpādi); but Raṅga Rāmānuja takes it as *Deva-Vidyā* (Gandharva-Śāstram) or Music and *Jana-Vidyā* or Āyurveda (Medical Science). Said Nārada: "These subjects, sir, have I studied. Therefore am I learned in the scripture (*Mantra-vit*), but not yet learned in the *Ātmā* (Ātma-vit). Yet have I heard from such as are like you that he who knows the Ātman vanquishes sorrow. I am in sorrow. Lead me then over, I pray, to the farther shore that lies beyond sorrows."

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Nārada here utters the prayer of all human beings carrying the common and universal burden of sorrow, the ills which flesh is heir to. It was given to India to find the knowledge which would achieve man's release from this fundamental burden and bondage of life.

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The reply of Sanatkumāra to this appeal of Nārada is interesting: "Whatever you have studied is mere words." Similarly. Śvetaketu spending twelve years in a "thorough study of all the Vedas" is found by his father, Rishi Uddālaka Āruṇi, only "full of conceit and confidence in his study and wisdom, without the knowledge of the One through whom anything is known" (Chhāndogya, vi, 1).

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Upakosala Kāmalāyana was another student who by his twelve years' study and austerities was not considered fit by his teacher for the highest knowledge (ib., iv, 10).

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Therefore, the *Bṛihadāraṇyaka* states (iv, 4, 21): "The seeker after the highest knowledge should not seek after the knowledge of the books, for that is mere weariness of the tongue." Again: "Therefore, let a Brāhmaṇa, after he has done with learning, wish to stand by real strength (knowledge of the Self which enables us to dispense with all other knowledge)." The *Kaṭha* also points out: "Not by the Veda is the Ātman attained, nor by intellect, nor by much knowledge of books (i, 2, 23).

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We may now have an idea of the working of the school as a whole. Its physical surroundings away from centres of population gives to its students opportunities for contact with Nature and for solitude. Urban life and human society wean away man's affections from the phenomena of Nature. The individual becomes in this way wholly dependent upon the social group; he feels himself gradually as a mere limb of the Great Society. One way of counteracting this sense of dependence, and of poverty of spirit, is to place Man in the world of Nature, and give scope to the growth of an emotive relation between Man and his milieu. He can break away from his social habits and reshape them. Alone in the woods or pastures, he gets emotive responses in the form of fear, wonder, or joy which reawaken in him the consciousness of self which he loses in the crowd of the city. For emotional tension brings in its wake the feeling of self-hood.

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Then, again, solitude has its own effects on a man's inner development. In the normal course of life, each desire is directed to an object. The fulfilment that an impulse finds in its working obscures the phase of recoil that arises through the operation of a man's instinctive tendencies. Isolation from objects, material and social, permits man to observe both the aspects of his reaction, the urge and the recoil, elicited by an object-situation. Hence the life of conation can pursue a course of more complete growth when man is alone with himself, untrammelled by the external environment. Thus the system helps in the elimination of the disharmonies of inner life (Chitta-śuddhi) by giving scope for reflection and isolation, for self-possession, for the integration of different life-processes, and a complete awareness of one's individuality or self-hood, so that man's being may not be dissipated like "broken shreds of cloud" (Chhinnābhramiva naśyati).

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It is these sylvan schools and hermitages that have built up the thought and civilization of India.

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As has been pointed out in the graphic words of the poet Rabindra Nath Tagore:

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“A most wonderful thing we notice in India is that here the forest, not the town, is the fountain-head of all its civilization.

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“Wherever in India its earliest and most wonderful manifestations are noticed, we find that men have not come into such close contact as to be rolled or fused into a compact mass. There, trees and plants, rivers and lakes, had ample opportunity to live in close relationship with men.

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“In these forests, though there was human society, there was enough of open space, of aloofness; there was no jostling. Still this aloofness did not produce inertia in the Indian mind; rather it rendered it all the brighter. It is the forest that has nurtured the two great ancient ages of India, the Vaidic and the Buddhist.

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“As did the Vaidic Ṛishis, Lord Buddha also showered his teaching in the many woods of India.

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“The current of civilization that flowed from its forests inundated the whole of India.”

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No doubt these ancient ideals of education have to be adapted to modern conditions. The principles on which the West is ordering life do not seem to make for stability. That can only come from the Indian view of life, which makes for universal peace by its toleration. The exaggerated nationalism of the West is defeating itself, a victim of its own system. In this world-situation, surely Indian thought has its own place to fill. India must carefully conserve and foster the particular type of personality or character she has been building up through the ages by a corresponding system of education. Modern Psychology conceives of the personality as built out of diverse planes of psycho-vital processes. Deep down in the recesses of the Self, as Jung points out, lies the racial unconscious representing the cues of the long forgotten storms and stresses through which the race has evolved. These supply the archetypes that create myths and fables and impart form to the yearnings and gropings of desires. There is then the plane of experience that the individual has passed through and has laid aside in the interest of imperative reactions which the immediate situation demands. Lastly, there are the configurations, impulses, and ideas of conscious life slowly and selectively built up by the forces of the society and the physical environment. A scheme of education introduced for the sake of transient interests and ideology often fails to encompass the total personality thus conceived. It violates the laws of self-development and leads the process of growth through tortuous alleys.

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For the present, in India, various schemes of reform of education are in the air, but it is to be remembered that no reform can take root or bear fruit unless it conforms to national ideals and traditions. The course of growth of social and national life is regulated by certain basic ideals and norms. These define the structure that society and the trends of social activity assume in the course of historical evolution. They may be called, in Kantian terminology, the "categories" of national life. Divorced from them, social thoughts, activities, and institutions, to use the Kantian notion again, follow a "blind" course. The discovery of these concepts is essential for the formulation of schemes for any phase of national activity. Our educational thought, like every other strand of social life, must orient itself to these regulative principles which have validated themselves pragmatically, by "working", through the ages, and through tensions and crises.

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One may not believe so much in national systems in economic life and organization in the larger interests of the collective welfare of mankind, but there can be no doubt about the national system in education, aiding in the evolution of each nation along its own lines, so that it may make its particular contribution to the culture of mankind. "God has written a line of His thought on the brow of every nation" [Mazzini]. It is the supreme duty of every nation to preserve and unfold its own genius and individuality. The culture of a nation, the civilization of a country, is the product of its system of education.

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In several spheres of her national life, India is being swept off her traditional moorings, the anchor of her soul, to drift in the unfathomed waters of uncharted seas. It is, therefore, of the utmost concern and consequence to her future that she must not drift away from her national heritage and basic ideals in the sphere of culture and learning, where her achievements constitute to this day her only title to recognition in the comity of nations. India is still in request in the world for the treasures of her thought. These treasures are embedded in Sanskrit literature, together with its offshoots, Pāli and the Prākrits, which is remarkable in the literature of the world for its vastness, volume, variety, quality, and longevity, and justifies the education of which it is the product.

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