In which text the four Ashramas have been mentioned for the first time?

Question

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Correct — B, the Jabalopanisada (Jabala Upanishad). The four ashramas as a set — brahmacharya (student), grihastha (householder), vanaprastha (forest-dweller) and sannyasa (renouncer) — are first named together in this late Upanishad of the Shukla Yajurveda tradition, which is devoted mainly to the question of renunciation. It is also the text of the celebrated permission 'yadahar eva virajet tadahar eva pravrajet' — the day detachment comes, that very day one may renounce — which lets a person enter sannyasa without necessarily passing through the intervening stages. Standard ancient-history textbooks therefore credit the Jabala Upanishad with the first mention of the four-ashrama scheme.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The Rigveda knows the brahmacharin (student) and it knows the long-haired ascetic of the keshin hymn, but nowhere does it lay out a scheme of four life-stages.  (c) Manusmriti gives the fullest and most systematic account of ashrama-dharma, which is exactly why it tempts — but as a Dharmashastra it codifies and elaborates a scheme the Upanishadic literature already knew; it is not the first mention.  (d) The epic discusses the ashramas and renunciation at length, especially in the Shanti Parva, but the textual credit for the first statement of the four-fold scheme goes to the Jabala Upanishad, not to the epic.

Concept: The ashrama scheme is the second half of varnashrama-dharma: alongside the four varnas it maps an ideal life onto four successive stages for the twice-born (dvija) male — study, householding, withdrawal and renunciation. Historically it reads as a Brahmanical accommodation of the shramana challenge: when Buddhism, Jainism and other renouncer traditions made world-abandonment attractive, orthodoxy absorbed renunciation by placing it at the end of a life that had first discharged its social debts. The Jabala Upanishad states the four stages; the Dharmasutras and Manusmriti then work them into a detailed code of duties.

State PCS 2026 Q53 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q53 — History PYQ with Answer