प्राचीन भारत में शिक्षा (डॉ. ए.एस. अल्तेकर - गुरुकुल एवं बौद्ध विहार शिक्षण इतिहास)

XI] ACHIEVEMENTS AND FAILURES 251
the Sāṁkhya and the Mīmāṁsā, which did not recognise
a Creator-God, were admitted within the fold of
orthodoxy. Buddhism and Jainism were not summarily
dismissed as athiestic or heterodox ; their scriptures
were carefully studied in order to prove that their
theories were unsound. For a long time society was
successful in reconciling its reverence for the past with
its regard for the advance of knowledge ; it used to
silently abandon exploded views and quietly accept new
theories and doctrines.
The changed Attitude of later Times : Unfortu-
nately for the progress of learning and scholarship
Vedic literature was canonised some time about
600 B.C. An almost equally high reverence came to
be paid to the Smṛitis and Purāṇas in course of time.
The authorship of these works came to be attributed to
divine or inspired agency, and it was averred that what
they contained could not be false, what they opposed
could not be true. Theories began to be accepted or
rejected according as they were in conformity with or
opposed to the statements of thesacred books on the
point. Intellectual giants like Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja had
to spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy
to prove that their systems of philosophy were in
conformity with and the natural outcomes of the Upa-
nishadic hypotheses. If the hold of the Srutis and Smṛitis
were not so exacting, there would have been freer
development of philosophy. At any rate many of the
remarkable intellects of the Middle Ages would have
found it possible to write independent works on their
own systems of philosophy instead of being compelled
to present it unsystematically, while engaged in the
ostensible task of writing commentaries on the revealed
literature. Instead of Nibandha compilations, we
would have possessed original Smṛitis of the later times.