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

XI] ACHIEVEMENTS AND FAILURES 253
anxious to win cheap popularity by supporting the
popular view that what was contained in the Vedas
and Manusmṛiti could not be untrue. It is interesting
to note that Varāhamihira first combats the Rāhu-Ketu
theory,¹ but then immediately succumbs to it.²
Āryabhaṭa alone has perhaps the moral courage to be
consistent with his intellectual convictions. But he
also only hints that the popular theory is wrong, but
does not dare to attack it openly.³ If the Rāhu-Ketu
theory of eclipses has continued to retain its hold over
the popular Hindu mind for the last 1500 years and
more, inspite of the scientific discovery of the true
cause of eclipses, the reason is that Hindu scholarship
of later times was too much in the leading strings of
religion to carry on active propaganda against its
hypothses. Similarly astronomers continued to
subscribe to the view that the constellation of the Great
Bear moves from one lunar mansion to another in
a hundred years, even when they had discovered that
such was not the case. The discontinuance of dissection
in the medical training and the abandonment of
agriculture by the Brahmanas, Buddhists and Jains
are also to be attributed to the hold of the progressively
puritanical notions over the popular mind.⁴
Similar Hostility to Rationalism in Europe also :

1. Bṛihat-saṁhitā, V. 4 ff. यदि मूर्तो भविचारी शिरोथवा भवति
   मंडली राहुः । भगणार्धेनान्तरिते गृह्णाति कथं नियतचारः ॥ ४ ॥
   अथ भुजगेन्द्ररूपः पुच्छेन मुखेन वा स गृह्णाति । मुखपुच्छान्तःसंस्थं
   स्थगयति कस्मान्न भगणार्धम् ।
2. Ibid, v. 13 एवमुपरागकारणमुक्तमिदं दिव्यदृग्भिराचार्यैः । राहुः
   कारणमस्मिन्नित्युक्तः शास्त्रसद्भावः ॥
3. Golabhāga, v. 49 यदसज्ज्ञानसमुद्रात्समुद्धृतं देवताप्रसादेन ।
   सज्ज्ञानोत्तमरत्नं मया निमग्नं स्वमतिना वा ।
4. I-tsing, p. 62.