It is interesting to note a difficult problem faced by the Indian law-givers in ancient and medieval India. How are all the people in the country, including the sudras (who are being denied even a minimum education), made to get accustomed to the extreme undesirablity of free thinking which easily leads to the spirit of questioning the scriptures? The problem is a formidable one since even though their law codes have some kind of scriptural status (smriti, though not sruti), the sudras are considered too polluted to study the scriptures. Thus law-codes alone can hardly be expected to have any direct impact on the minds of the masses. Yet the masses are somehow or other to be made aware about these, because it is primarily for the purpose of keeping them under control that the law-givers are so enthuiastic to ban free thinking. How is this problem to be solved? It is solved by the redactors of the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata.

 

The two epics of India contain numerous passages bearing on many topics of the dharma-sastra [law-codes] and were relied upon as authorities in medieval and later works...The Mahabharata had become, long before the seventh century A.D. a work for popular education and was being recited before general audiences of men and women in India, as in the nineteenth century.

Incidentially, the Mahabharata itself claims that among the subjects on which it is an authority, the first place is that of the dharma-sastra.

So the question now is what is the attitude to free thinking embodied in these epics? Two examples may be given:

In the Mahabharata the dying Bhisma is made to deliver a long sermon to Yudhisthira in the course of which he narrates an interestng parable, known as the parable of Indra and Kasyapa. Once upon a time a merchant, arrogant of immense wealth, runs his chariot over a brahmin of the Kasyapa clan. The latter thinks that since there is no redress to such an injustice, life is not worth living. So he is about to commit suicide. To prevent him from doing this, Indra, in the guise of a jackal, appears before him and describes to him at great length the miseries of being born as a low animal. His main point is that the great fortune of being born as a human being--particularly as a brahmin--is too precious to be deliberately destroyed. But this jackal, as Indra says referring to himself, was not always a jackal. In his previous birth, he was a human being, and hence did not suffer the agonies of animal existence. He was condemned to be reborn as a low animal because of a grave sin committed by him during his previous human existence. It is the sin of being a free thinker or a logician freely questioning the scriptures on the strengh of reason alone. As the jackal puts it (Mahabharata Santi Parva cviii.47-9):

[In the previous life] I was attached to logic, the technique of fruitless argumentations (anviksikim tarkavidyam anurakto nirarthakam). I was a scholar in a degraded sense, because in the capacity of a free thinker (haituka), I was a vilifier of the Veda (veda-ninaka). In the assemblies I used to put forth all sorts of logical considerations, which was the most improper thing to do. I used to refute the Brahmins and was hostile to what the Brahmins said. I was a disbeliever (nastika) and I entertained doubts about everything. Hence, I was just a fool with pretentions to learning. Oh Brahmin, this life of the jackal which I am now suffering is the result of all this.

In the Ramayana, the same denunciation of free thinking is more directly expressed though this time with the additional suggestion that free thinking has the inherent tendency to develop into the materialist outlook. Thus, in the course of advising Bharata on how to rule the kingdom, the following words are put into the mouth of Lord Rama (Valmiki Ramayana Ayodhya c.38-9)