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OCTOBER, 1928)
THE HOME OF THE UPANIŞADS
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the country with their pupils in their wake, is also proved by incidents recorded in the Purâņas and the Mahabharata. Thus, Mbh. iii. 261 narrates a visit to Duryodhana by Durvâså and a similar visit by him to Yudhişthira, with ten thousand pupils following him. The practice of taking some pupils with oneself on one's journeys, specially when the journey is made on an invitation, has continued among Brahmans even till the present day.
Of course, some of these itinerant Brahmans owned a home and even a wife, and sometimes even more than one wife (e.g., Br. Up., ii. 4). And they had their children to boot. And it is also true that however much they might prize the patronage of princes, very few of them lived under a royal roof. Some no doubt did live in the household of kings in some capacity or other, but not many. And the Upanişadic teachers wre mostly dwellers in villages or even in forests. But one can easily assume that when w princely house was particularly kind to any sect of these Brahmans, such Brahmans would naturally fix up their abode within the area protected by these princes and in their neighbourhood. And from the eminent position of the court of Videha, it may well be inferred that it must have held itself responsible for the protection of the life and property of many a Upanişadic teacher. In all probability, they had their homes within reach of Videha's arms; and it was there that they maintained their pupils and held their schools.
If it is a question of choice as between Videha and Magadha, it is not difficult to see that we have to cast our vote in favour of Videha rather than Magadha as the home of Upanigadic speculation. But provincial boundaries were not yet sharply defined in those early days, and, besides, Magadha also seems to have had its share in the development of this culture, though Videha's share was decidedly more noteworthy. The two districts have to be mentioned conjointly because they are generally so spoken of and also because, as a matter of fact, both had their contributions to the building up of Brahma-vidya.
We may note in passing here that interesting light is thrown on the question of the home of the Upanigadic teachers by some ancient Greek writers. They almost uniformly locate the philosophers of ancient India either on the banks of the Ganges or on mountains which remain nameless. Bardesanes, a writer of the second century A.D., says: “Of the philosophers among them i.e., the Brahmans), some inhabit the mountains, others the banks of the Ganges.” (The quotations are from McCrindle's translation, vide his Ancient India). Pseudo-Kallisthenes says that the men lived on the shores of the ocean or on one side of the river (presumably the Ganges), and the women on the other side towards the interior of the country. Philostratos of Semnos locates the philosophers between Hyphasis (the river Beas) and the Ganges. Apollonius of Tyana (Priaulx's translation) repeats the statement that the philosophers' eountry lay between the Hyphasis and the Ganges and that Alexander never invaded it.
The evidence of these writers is far from conclusive, and the honesty and veracity of many of them has been challenged. In any case, their statements are not free from confusion. But they indicate a tendency to locate our philosophers on the banks of the Ganges, and, what is more important, on the eastern banks of that river. That brings us to the area we have kept in view. And when corroborative evidence is found elsewhere, we have no right to reject this testimony.
The whole host of evidence, therefore, seems to drive us but to this one conclusion that the home of Brahma-vidyê was the country of Videha-Magadha. Ideas on the subject perhaps floated all over the surface of Aryavarta ; but a systematic cultivation of the subject took place, for a long time it seems, in Videha-Magadha alone. This was, therefore, the Home of the Upanişads.
