THE MORALS OF THE HOUSE 349
devotion; but nothing is more exalted than the Gayatri; a declaration of truth is more excellant than silence.
II. 84. All rites ordained in the Veda, oblations to fire, and solemn sacrifices pass away; but that which passes not away, is declared to be the syllable om, thence called acshara; since it is a symbol of God, the Lord of created beings.
II. 85. The act of repeating his Holy Name is ten times better than the appointed sacrifice; an hundred times better when it is heard by no man; and a thousand times better when it is purely mental.
II. 86. The four domestic sacraments which are accompanied with the appointed sacrifice, are not equal though all be united, to a sixteenth part of the sacrifice performed by a repetition of the gayatri.
This investiture is equivalent to a new birth.
II. 147. Let a man consider that as a mere human birth, which his parents gave him for their mutual gratification, and which he receives after lying in the womb.
II. 148. But that birth which his principal acharya, who knows the whole Veda, procures for him by his divine mother the gayatri, is a true birth; that birth is exempt from age and from death.
II. 169. The first birth is from a natural mother; the second, from the ligation of the zone; the third from the due performance of the sacrifice; such are the births of him who is usually called twice-born, according to a text of the Veda.
II. 170. Among them his divine birth is that, which is distinguished by the ligation of the zone, and sacrificial cord ; and in that birth the Gayatri is his mother, and the Acharya, his father. This sacrament is not permitted by Manu to Shudras and to women.
II. 103. But he who stands not repeating it in the morning, and sits not repeating it in the evening, must be precluded, like a Sudra, from every sacred observance of the twice born class.
Manu has not forgotten to mention rules relating to education and learning. Manu has nothing to say about mass education. He does not see the utility of it and he does not see the necessity of imposing any obligation upon the king or the state. He was merely concerned with the learning of the sacred and Religious literature namely the Vedas.
Veda must be learned from a preceptor and with his assent. No one can read and study the Vedas by himself. He will be guilty of theft if he did it.