The child doesn't become learned just by being born.
mAtRi-pitRi-kRitAbhyAso guNitAm_eti bAlakaH |
na garbha-chyuti-mAtreNa putro bhavati paNDitaH ||
hitopadeshH - preface 28
मातृपितृकृताभ्यासो गुणितामेति बालकः ।
न गर्भच्युतिमात्रेण पुत्रो भवति पण्डितः ।।
Indian parents put a lot of stress on education—whatever they can afford, or sometimes even what they cannot afford. This has given Indians an edge almost everywhere they go for higher studies. As the saying goes, "a king is respected only in his own kingdom, but the wise are respected everywhere." To the point that even President Obama urged the US to focus on education. This is also seen in many Asian cultures, where Indian parents support even their child’s college education.
While in the US, I saw many undergraduate students taking all sorts of odd jobs on campus to support themselves, and sometimes it did impact their studies. It is also true that higher education in the US has become exorbitantly expensive for the average Joe.
Continuing from the last post, where King Sudarśhana ponders the pros and cons of hard work and education, here is another śhloka that signifies the role of parents and education in a child's success.
As we have seen in the opening śhlokas of Hitopadeśha, they stress the importance of education and how it nurtures and makes a person worthy in society. Here, we see the role of parents in making a child qualified, worthy, and successful in society.
Merely being born is not enough. A human child is born much before it is ready to survive on its own. Most other animals come into life ready to fight and survive, both oviparous and viviparous. A giraffe baby stands within minutes and trots in a few more! Immediately after hatching, a chick starts to run fast enough to give you a good workout trying to catch it. The parental support required is very little in most animals.
But a human baby needs support, guidance, and help in every aspect of life for a considerable duration. Be it eating, walking, talking, learning skills, or being dropped off for soccer or violin practice—the mother plays a critical role in the beginning (including soccer moms!). Anthropologists say that language was most probably developed by women because while men had to work silently on the hunt, women back in the cave or home would talk with their children and other women to pass the time. There is a reason why it is called "mother tongue."
The mother tells who the father is, the father shows the guru, and the guru shows the divine (God). Hence, this is the sequence in which they are held in reverence. This is also the sequence in which they are important in a person's life. A baby only cares for the mother, a growing child starts to look up to the father, school kids think their parents know nothing compared to their teachers, and once beyond the guidance of a teacher, somewhere along the way, we realize the importance of the divine—when the understanding grows to comprehend the supreme spectacle of all, the glory of the manifest and unmanifest.
So, it is not enough to just take birth. By birth, we are just like animals—food, sleep, fear, and procreation. And after this śhloka, comes another: "A mother who does not educate her child is an enemy, and a father is a competitor."
While it is true that children are like arrows shot from a bow, and we cannot control them (Khalil Gibran), nor should we even try to, it is the paramount duty of parents to make every effort to give the child skills to survive and education to succeed in this world. Parents have the greatest influence on a child.
When parents do this as their duty, children see it and reciprocate with respect and care. Children don’t listen to you; they watch you. How you live is more important than what you say. When parents do this with a sense of burden—worrying about their economic security in old age, their privacy, and their "free will"—children sense it too. And when they grow up, they start looking for glossy brochures of senior homes.
The role of a parent is critical in a child's development—genes at the physical level, education, environment, and care at the mental level.
Don't neglect your children's welfare.
And now the language aspects of the shloka -
mAtRi-pitRi-kRitAbhyAso =
abhyAsaH = practice, study, training
kRita = done
mAtRi = mother
pitRi = father
kRita-abhyAsaH = who has done abhyAsa
mAtRi-pitRi-kRitAbhyAsaH = one who has been taught, trained, educated (even indirectly) by the mother and father
guNitAm_eti =
guNa = virtue, qualification, skill, etc
guNitAm = learned
eti = goes towards
i.e. goes towards the state of being qualified
bAlakaH = boy, child (for today's inclusive context)
na = not
garbha-chyuti-mAtreNa = merely by coming out of the womb
garbha = womb
chyut = displaced, fallen
achyuta = not fallen, displaced, hence unblemished, name of kRiShNa
chyuti = displacement, fall
mAtra = mere, only
mAtreNa = by merely (-eNa suffix, karaNa 3rd vibhakti)
putro = putraH = son, child
bhavati = becomes, happens
paNDitaH = learned
trailing -aH becomes -o due to sandhi.
so, 'putraH bhavati' becomes 'putro bhavati'
(c) Shashikant Joshi । शशिकांत जोशी । ॐ सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः ।
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please do add your name and place, after the comment.