THE SHUDRAS : THE DEGRADATION OF THE SHUDRAS 173
VII
That the Brahmins possessed the power to deny Upanayana is beyond question. The doubt probably arises from the fact that there is nowhere an express statement showing the conferment of such a power upon the Brahmins. All the same, whatever doubt there may be lurking in the minds of persons who are not aware of the operative parts of the religious system of the Indo-Aryans must vanish if account is taken of two things: (1) the exclusive right of the Brahmin to officiate at the Upanayana and (2) the penalties imposed upon the Brahmin for performing unauthorised Upanayana.
It is probable that in most ancient times it was the father who taught his son the Gayatri, with which the study of the Veda begins and for which the ceremony of Upanayana was devised at a later stage. But it is beyond question that from a very early time the function of performing Upanayana had been assigned to a guru or a teacher called the Acharya and the boy went and stayed in the Acharya’s house.
The questions as to who should be the Acharya and what should be his qualification have been the subject of discussions from very ancient times.
The Acharya must be a man learned in the Vedas. A Brahmana text [1] says, “he, whom a teacher devoid of learning initiates, enters from darkness into darkness and he also (i.e. an acharya) who is himself unlearned (enters into darkness).”
The Ap. Dh. S. (1.1.1.12—13), lays down that an Acharya selected for performing one’s Upanayana should be endowed with learning and should be one whose family is hereditarily learned and who is serene in mind, and that one should study Vedic lore under him up to the end (of brahmacharya) as long as the teacher does not fall off from the path of Dharma. [2]
But the first and foremost qualification of an Acharya is that he must be a Brahmana: It was only in times of difficulty (i.e., when a Brahmana is not available) that a person was allowed to have a
1 Quoted in the Ap. Dh. S., I. i. i. 11, Kane, II (I), p. 324.
2 According to Vyasa (quoted in Sam. p., p. 408) the Acharya should be one who is solely devoted to the Veda, who knows Dharma, is born of a good family, who is pure, is a shrotriya that has studied his Vedic sakha and who is not lazy. Shrotriya has been defined as one who has studied one sakha of a Veda.