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Vol. XXIV, 2001
REVIEW asura in the post-Rgvedic times, is tht of a creature with much knowledge and power derived from knowledge, but no wisdom; arrogance hving replaced wisdom. We have under our very eyes the mixed blessings of genetic engineering as applied to medical practice, agriculture or pharmaceutical production, some of which are potentially capable of great feats, including that of alterng demographic patterns.
The methjodology that the authoress adopted is of using a biological ket to 'decode' the verses, and seeking interal evience in the Vedas themselves. Sh has also tried to understyandthe saṁskāras related to the discussed hymns, and hastried to find thelogical nexus between the rites, theobservation and theunderstanding of all nature, including the cosmos as seen by human eyes from the planet Earth. She found that the logic of the rites and of the rituals is coherent with the facts of nature, thatr mosof the salskāras or Vedic sacrifices are meant toshow the direction and also to achieve integration of the world within oneself with the world outside the self, and that this is an important point of Advaita Vedānta with all its intellectual, spiritual and psychological implications. The unveiling of Rta is thus based on logical thinking.
And, to make the book all the more useful, the authoress has given an exhastive glossary, a bibliography and an index. N.M.K.
Chatterjee, Mitali: Education in Ancient India (From Literary Sources ofthe Gupta Age), D.K.Prinyworld (P) Ltd., New Delhi, 1999, pp. xii + 303, Rs.380/=
Although many aspects of political, ocial, religious and cultural history of the Guptas have been worked upon by researches of various eminent scholars, none so far as is known to us has seriously taken up the educational system oftheGupta Age as thesubject of their study. The Purānas, poems, dramas, SAnskrit inscriptions nd coins belonging to this period furnish us with valuable documents relating to the details about the educational system of that period. But they hve not been elaborately dealt with by any prominent author of that age. Yet there remain scattered a good number of mterials concerning education in innumerable works of this period. THe educational system practised by peopleof later Gupta period sometimes helps us to imagine as to how the system of education was nurtured by thepeople of the Gupta Age.THe system of this age was in a highly eveloped condition.
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