Chapter 1 - Universal Education in Ancient India

Before we begin the survey of the medical achievements and institutions of ancient India, let us first acquaint ourselves with the standards and spread of general education among the people during this period. No country could be medically advanced which is educationally backward and unless we can assure ourselves that the general educational level of the people in ancient India was reasonably high, we cannot feel sure that their medical institutions worked adequately.

Educational Systems and Institutions

The indigenous ideal of education in India has always been to treat it as a sacred process. That process activated the individuals inner growth, which could only be achieved by means of constant and close contact between the pupil and the teacher where the latter’s personal touch and constant vigilance counted most in the pupil’s education Education itself was taken in its literal and true sense as the educing and developing of the latent capacities, potentialities and the personality of the pupil. It was therefore treated as a process of scientific development and not as a mere mechanical process operating on the basis of collective drill and training.

Conditions of life in Ancient India Aryan Culture.

The Aryans who first entered India were remarkable for their many virtues and strength of intellect. The Vedic Rishis not only composed hymns and performed sacrifices but fought their wars and ploughed their fields. Their martial spirit was for a long time kept alive by the necessity of holding their own against the enemy. The mild climate and fertile soil of the country bringing the means of subsistence within easy reach made the struggle for existence in India an easy one. Besides the lofty mountains and the seas shutting the country off for a long time from outside influences gave the Indian culture a unique character. The peculiar environmental conditions of India have tended to make her people more meditative and philosophical.

The general condition of the country as a land of plenty and fertility, peaceful environments of the forest dwelling Rishis, support of the princes and the rich to the cause of education in general, and the spirit of scientific research, inquiry, imagination and thinking on the part of the Rishis, all these factors combined together contributed greatly to India’s later greatness in the field of knowledge in general and art and science in particular.

The Rishi Scholars

From the very beginning of the Vedic period there appears on the field, a class of Rishis who were the real exponents of Aryan culture and who devoted their lives to disinterested psychological and scientific inquiry in thinking, imagination, reasoning and generalisation.

These Rishis were the proto-types of our modern scientific research scholars. These Rishi scholars lived apart from the world in quiet forest retreats—ideal places for study, and meditated on and discussed the problems of life from different points of view from that of other people. Some one has justly remarked that India was a nation of scholars in old days as the west is a nation of scholars at present. The forest Ashramas (dwellings) gradually grew to be the centres of the highest Aryan learning. Though deeply absorbed in, metaphysical studies, the Rishis’ experience of worldly life won them high reputation as teachers for the younger generation.

The ancient Aryan people who inhabited this country were gradually divided into four classes, the Brahmanas or the priestly class, the Ksatriyas or the martial class, the Vaishyas or the agricultural and commercial class, and the Shudras or the serving class.

The Brahmanas

The Brahmanas (preceptor class) became the dispensers of religion, of laws and of medicine. They exhibited a superiority of intelligence which, with the exception of the Greeks, is in vain looked for in other ancient nations. In ancient India, the Aryan literature was highly cherished and fully cared for by the princes and opulent individuals, for the patronage of literature and religion increased their temporal power and religious influence Such encouragement operated powerfully as an incentive to the study and literary exertion of Scholars. It was the endeavour of the influential class to encourage education and poetry as well as medicine and religion, the former enhancing the intellect of the rising generation and immortalising in verse the grandeur of their patrons, the latter explaining the treatment of the body in health and disease and the means of ensuring happiness to the individual after death.

The first three classes of people were compelled to undergo a long period of rigorous studentship, the compulsion was not governmental but a far stronger one—the compulsion of religio social convention. It was unthinkable for a member of these three classes, known as Dvijas or twice-born, to evade the obligation to study, which was enforced both as a matter of religious duty as well as social convention. Any violation of this obligation brought upon the offender the terrible penalty of being declared an outcaste (Vrātya) and debarred from all the privileges of a member of the Aryan community. As regards the members of the fourth class, whose business it was to serve the other three classes, the obligation to studentship as in the case of the three twice-born classes did not exist, but it would be a mistake to assume that the educational needs of this class were neglected. In fact with the exception of the Vedas, a member of the Shudra class could be and frequently was highly educated as any of the upper three classes, Vidura and Suta (Sūta) are but the supreme instances of the culture and enlightenment that prevailed in the whole class. The value of knowledge and consequently of education was fully realized by the early ancestors of our race whom we have come to know as Rishis or seers.

In the words of one of these the great author of the Caraka Samhita.

[Carakasaṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 30.84]

“All ills of humanity are rooted in ignorance and all progress and happiness in unclouded knowledge.”

Knowledge was indeed so highly prized by these Rishis that they dedicated their whole lives to the pursuit of learning, living in forest hermitages away from the distractions of the world. It was their firmfaith that if man was ever to attain immortality it was through knowledge alone (vi?yāmṛtamaśrute). They loved knowledge above all things, above even kingship and wealth. Thus when Yama, God of death gives the boon of an incredibly long life, with all the appurtenances of luxury and oppulence, to the young student, Naciketas the latter declines the gift with the saying that the soul of man is not satisfied by material acquisition (na vittena tarpaṇīyo manuṣyaḥ) and insists on knowing the answer to the riddle of man’s survival of his bodily death. The wife of the sage Yajnavalkya (Yājñavalkya) speaks in a similar vein when her husband prior to leaving her, offers to bequeath her his earthly possessions.

Says she, “If you give me the whole earth with its riches would it make me immortal?” on the sage replying that there is no hope of immortality through wealth (amṛtatvasya nāśāsti vittena) the high souled Maitreyi announces that she has no use for such perishing gifts and wishes to be taught the secret of immortality.

Such then was the value our early ancestors as seen from the above-mentioned Maitreyi (Maitraiyī [=Maitreyī?]) story, set on the acquisition of knowledge. They considered the achievement of knowledge and through it that of immortality or deliverance of the soul from the cycle of births and deaths, as the final end of human existence (sā vidyā yā vimuktaye) and human existence they regarded not as the expression merely of a coming together of material atoms but as the expression of a unique assemblage of body, senses, mind and soul as Caraka puts it (śarīrendriyasatvātmasayoga[?]) Consistently with this view of man’s nature and destiny, the Rishis evolved a system of education which was education in the true sense of the word. It was an education, which had for its aim the educing or the drawing out of the latent capacities and potentialities of the whole man in the individual. It sought to build up the whole man and enable him to lead as good and useful a life as possible according to the existing conditions of time and place.

It was an education which aimed at securing for its votary his well-being both here and hereafter as is claimed for the science of Ayurveda by its author.

[Carakasaṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 1.43]

“It is the Science of Life which teaches mankind what constitutes their good in both the worlds”

No wonder then that education meaning as it did sole means of man s realization of his immortal destiny, was invested with the highest sanctity

These ideals of education were translated into actual practice and during the long era of the golden age of Aryan culture extending over two thousand years an elaborate educational organization was built up which succeeded in making the highest fruits of education available to the humblest member of the society.

This marvellous achievement was made possible not by recourse to State aid or compulsion but by the establishment of a religio-social convention which made it incumbent for every member of the Aryan community to receive a thorough education.

This fact of universal education and righteous living is amply borne out by the passage in the Chandogya Upanisad (Chāndogyopaniṣad) where king Ashvapati (Aśvapati) of Kekaya claims that:

“In my dominion, no villain, no drunkard, none who neglected his religious rites, none uneducated, no man incontinent and gay as libertine, no worman who was unchaste, existed”.

As a matter of fact it was considered the religious duty of every father to educate his son.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanisad lays down that:

[Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad 1.5.17]

“Therefore they speak of an educated son as being conducive to the world. Hence the father teaches his son.”

The faculty that enabled the rich as well as the poor to launch on an educational career was the absence of the compulsion, to pay any fee at all or at least to begin with. At the end of his career of education, the disciple could, out of his own choice, make suitable payment of fee to his preceptor. In a society consequently where the love of knowledge and of service to the fellow man was held so highly, and every one was educated, it is but natural that the medical science should have drawn the flower of society to itself and should have made use of it for the advancement of human welfare

This glorious state continued at least up to the seventh century A. D. and not only were the teaching institutions spread through the length and breadth of the country as the Chinese traveller Yuan Chwang has depicted, but more important still was the general attitude of the cultured classes in regard to the filtering down of the essence of culture to the millions of the masses with a purely philanthropic motive