Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c9.54

c9.54

**Mastery of Vedic Texts and their Meaning.** When Vedic learning was thus brought to light and fixed in a comprehensible form by its great Masters, the creative geniuses of the Ṛishis, the need arose, and suitable methods were evolved, for conserving and teaching that learning. The first method naturally was that of committing to memory the texts of that learning as they were recited by the teacher. There was a method by which the teacher recited the texts. He recited them in the form of Metres, pronouncing every letter, syllable, and word according to standardized rules regulating accents and stresses and giving scope to the vibrations of every sound so as to call up its inner sense. The young pupils had thus to repeat the letters, syllables, and words of the text, as they fell from the lips of their teachers, with mechanical precision and monotony, like a body of "croaking frogs."