प्राचीन भारत में शिक्षा (डॉ. ए.एस. अल्तेकर - गुरुकुल एवं बौद्ध विहार शिक्षण इतिहास)

XI] ACHIEVEMENTS AND FAILURES 253 anxious to win cheap popularity by supporting the popular view that what was contained in the Vedas and Manusmṛiti could not be untrue. It is interesting to note that Varāhamihira first combats the Rāhu-Ketu theory,¹ but then immediately succumbs to it.² Āryabhaṭa alone has perhaps the moral courage to be consistent with his intellectual convictions. But he also only hints that the popular theory is wrong, but does not dare to attack it openly.³ If the Rāhu-Ketu theory of eclipses has continued to retain its hold over the popular Hindu mind for the last 1500 years and more, inspite of the scientific discovery of the true cause of eclipses, the reason is that Hindu scholarship of later times was too much in the leading strings of religion to carry on active propaganda against its hypothses. Similarly astronomers continued to subscribe to the view that the constellation of the Great Bear moves from one lunar mansion to another in a hundred years, even when they had discovered that such was not the case. The discontinuance of dissection in the medical training and the abandonment of agriculture by the Brahmanas, Buddhists and Jains are also to be attributed to the hold of the progressively puritanical notions over the popular mind.⁴ Similar Hostility to Rationalism in Europe also :

1. Bṛihat-saṁhitā, V. 4 ff. यदि मूर्तो भविचारी शिरोथवा भवति मंडली राहुः । भगणार्धेनान्तरिते गृह्णाति कथं नियतचारः ॥ ४ ॥ अथ भुजगेन्द्ररूपः पुच्छेन मुखेन वा स गृह्णाति । मुखपुच्छान्तःसंस्थं स्थगयति कस्मान्न भगणार्धम् ।
2. Ibid, v. 13 एवमुपरागकारणमुक्तमिदं दिव्यदृग्भिराचार्यैः । राहुः कारणमस्मिन्नित्युक्तः शास्त्रसद्भावः ॥
3. Golabhāga, v. 49 यदसज्ज्ञानसमुद्रात्समुद्धृतं देवताप्रसादेन । सज्ज्ञानोत्तमरत्नं मया निमग्नं स्वमतिना वा ।
4. I-tsing, p. 62.