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

I, B] UPANAYANA RITUAL 269
married men, if they wanted to prosecute further
studies under a new teacher.¹ It was thus essentially
an educational ritual and bore some resemblance to the
formality of the admission procedure in modern schools
and colleges. In the course of time, however its signi-
ficance changed. It was felt necessary that the services
of the whole Aryan community should be conscripted for
the preservation of the Vedic literature which had grown
to considerable dimensions in the course of centuries;
Upanayana and Vedic studies were therefore made
obligatory for all. If it was not performed in time, it
was declared that the person would lose his Aryan status
and become unfit for marriage and social intercourse.
This threat no doubt helped the spread of Vedic learning
and gave an impetus to primary education, which was
in later times presupposed by Vedic studies; but it
also tended to transform this educational function into
a bodily (śārīrika) ritual. It began to be argued that it
should be performed even in the case of dumb and
deaf persons in order to render them eligible for
marriage.² Some late Smṛiti writers felt that the
ritual was primarily for the purification of the body;
they have therefore recommended that it should be
repeated in case the body is defiled by the bite of a
1 Ch. Up. V. II. Here, as a special case, King Aśvapati excu
the formality of Upanayana before beginning to teach his distin-
guished Brāhmaṇa pupils. The latter, however, had come ready for
the Upanayana. Cf. :—
ते ह समित्पाणयः पूर्वाह्णे प्रतिचक्रमिरे । तान्हानुपनीयैव एतदुवाच ।
2. See VMS, p. 361. The difficulty created by the impossibility
of the recitation of Vedic hymns by a deaf and dumb person was got
over by the theory that they may be recited by the teacher on behalf
of the dumb student. बटुपठनीयानां मंत्राणामाचार्य प्रत्येकं पाठो विधीयते ।
Ibid. Some writers like Śaṅkha-Likhita however did not agree with
this view ; cf. नोन्मत्तमूकान्संस्कुर्यात् । Quoted in VMS., p. 406