Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c6.s3.12

c6.s3.12

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.