Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c9.57

c9.57

'**Vratachārī.**' We thus get in the Ṛigveda glimpses of an educational system which comprised the small domestic school run by a teacher who admitted to his instruction resident pupils. These had to live with him under prescribed disciplines or vows as *vratachārīs*. An actual reference to a Brahmachārī and Upanayana ceremony is found in Ṛigveda, x, 109, 5 and also iii, 8, 4 and 5. In the primary stage, the school would be marked by noisy recitation and repetition of texts by pupils in the manner of frogs lustily croaking after rain. In the second stage, the collective work of the pupils in a class ceased, and their individual work commenced. Each had to achieve for himself by his individual effort, by his own *tapas* and *yoga*, by his silent and solitary meditation, the truth of the texts which had been taught to the class in common. Very soon differences manifested themselves among these *sakhās* or class-fellows in regard to their mental powers, like tanks of varying depths [x, 71, 7]. The more unfit were weeded out, sent back to the plough or the loom [x, 71, 9]. They were not meant for higher learning and spiritual life. The Rigveda tells of a family where the son was pursuing religious learning (as a *kāru*, "maker of hymns"), the father a practising physician (*bhishak*), and the mother a grinder of corn (*upala-prakshiṇī*) [ix, 112, 3], and of differences of mental aptitudes and occupations among men (*nā nānaṁ dhiyo vratāni janānām*) such as those of the carpenter (*takshā*), physician (*bhishak*), or learned man (*brahmā* = *brāhmaṇa*) [ib. 1].