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The Teacher as Mother or Midwife? A Comparison of Brahmanical and Socratic Methods of Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 April 2010

Kate Wharton
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Extract

Socrates famously compares himself to a midwife in Plato's Theaetetus. Much less well known is the developed metaphor of pregnancy at the centre of the initiation ritual that begins Brahmanical education. In this ritual, called Upanayana, the teacher is presented as becoming pregnant with the student. The Arthavaveda states:

The teacher leads the student towards himself, makes him an embryo within; he bears him in his belly three nights.

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Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 66 , July 2010 , pp. 103 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2010

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References

1 For the purposes of this chapter we will define Brahmanical education as purely concerning the memorisation of the sacred inherited verses – the Vedas – that were recited during the śrauta ritual. The term ‘Brahmanical’ refers to the experts (brahmins) who wrote the Brāhmaṇas and formalised and expanded the śrauta ritual. The definition of Brahmanical culture used here is not purely historical, but represents an over-arching cultural paradigm that extends from the composition of the Brāhmaṇas in 800–600 bce to the era of the Dharmaśāstras 100 bce–200 ce. We use the term ‘Brahmanical ritual’ rather than ‘Vedic ritual’ to draw a distinction between the early/middle Vedic culture and the late Vedic (Brahmanical) era. In the early/middle Vedic period the sacred hymns of the Vedas were composed by a large population of antagonistic tribes, and the sacrificial rite was a festal gathering not yet formalised, however, in the late Vedic (or Brahmanical) era, when the Brāhmaṇas were composed, the rite became a highly elaborate and controlled event. It is this later more developed ritual culture that is of interest to us here. This chapter does not intend to provide a historical outline of the full variety of educational methods in ancient India but to illustrate one predominant strand that can be seen as core to the educational system. For a more detailed discussion of the historical context of the strand that this chapter isolates refer to the introduction and first chapter of my thesis, Philosophy as a Practice of Freedom in Ancient India and Ancient Greece (SOAS, University of London, 2008).

2 Arthavaveda (Śaunaka Recension) 11.5.3, Kajihara, Meiko, The Brahmacārin in the Veda: The Evolution of the ‘Vedic Student’ and the Dynamics of Texts, Ritual and Society in Ancient India (Harvard University Thesis, 2002), p. 136Google Scholar.

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8 The Gopatha Brāhmaṇa states that the period of study for memorising one such Veda is twelve years (GB 2.5, CU 6.1.2.) Kane mentions various alternatives to this time found in the Law books, ranging from 3 to 18 years for each Veda, but twelve years seems to be the average. Kane, P.V., History of Dharmaśāstra, (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1975), pp. 348, 352Google Scholar.

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16 Lubin, Consecration and Ascetical Regimen, p. 189.

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21 www.vedchant.com presents recordings and accounts of a variety of mnemonic practice chants.

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38 Theaetetus 150c-d. Cooper, Plato, p. 167.

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42 See also Logi Gunnarsson, this volume, on the idea of ‘philosophical maladies.’

43 Matthew 5:48.