Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c9.3

c9.3

"What we read in the Vedas, those archives of Hindu wisdom, gives us only a faint idea of the sublime doctrines of the ancient teachers, and even so these are not in their original form. Only the gaze of the clairvoyant, directed upon the mysteries of the past, may reveal the unuttered wisdom which lies hidden behind these writings" [Rudolph Steiner quoted in *ib.*, p. 8]. According to the Hindu orthodox view, the Rigveda contains within itself the seeds and sources from which the entire course of Hindu thought through the ages has derived and flowed in so many streams. It lays the foundation upon which Hindu Civilization has been building up through the ages. Broadly speaking, it is on a foundation of plain living and high thinking. Therefore, though ancient India is lacking in great monuments of material progress achieved by some of the early civilizations of the world, like the Egyptian or the Assyrian, she is not lacking in monuments of intellectual or spiritual progress. Life was simple but thought high and of farthest reach, wandering through eternity.