Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c6.s1.5

c6.s1.5

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.