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SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
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the sixteenth day after the birth of the child or before the teeth of the child came out. Prince Harivahana has been shown reaching the age of five before all these sacraments were performed in his case.
Within the period of these Samskaras (the post natal ones) every possible care was taken by the king Meghavahana to secure and ensure the health and prosperity of the child. He arranged the lustration ceremonies to be performed thrice a day i.c. morning, noon-tide and evening by the old ladies of the harem carrying all the relevant materials of auspicious rites. He made the prince to be brought to thorough wakefulness time and again by very active and expert exercisers or sorcerers or charm-players gone to accomplishment by their skill in the exorcising of charms and by the physicians gone past all the branches of the science of medicine or Ayurveda. The ladies of the harem fondled him one and all. His lovely form had been bedecked with precious ornaments inlaid with innumerable gems of great efficacy in many places. His path was followed by the groups of palace guards, carrying weapons. Thus had he (i.e. Harivahana) spent five years of his age in the harem having his movements knowing no bounds and enjoying many types of pleasures of sports along with children of protectors of earth having their glossy curls dangling about their cheeks, on the shores of canals (lit. artificial streams), in the palaces of the Nandanagrove, on the peaks of the pleasure mounts and on the bejewelled mosaics naturally beautiful,2
3. EDUCATIONAL SACRAMENTS (Samskaras)
The Vidyarambha
"At the advent of the sixth year when (Harivahana) had attained to some refinements of the physical charms and had developed some leaning towards the understanding of the letters (of the alphabet), the king (i.c. Meghavahana) managed to be constructed a temple of learning of blameless nature just in his own palace in order to superimpose discipline and made a collection of teachers of learning, every now and then, who were innately opposed to the idea of taking to the path of vice, who had taken birth in the best lieges of men, who had their arguments and sayings free from fault on account of their being conversant with the vital points of all the scriptures and who had served well in the Gurukulas or various abodes of learned
1. Hindu Samskaras., pp. 102-103.
2. TM Vol. II p. 187.
