Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c6.s3.13

c6.s3.13

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.