In the Smṛiti rule,[258] "Let him admit as a pupil the Brahman lad when eight years old (by investing him with the sacred cord), let him instruct him," the object of the direction appears to be the pupil's instruction. Now a direction must have reference to somebody to be directed; and if you ask who is here to be directed, I reply, "He who desires to be a teacher," since, by Páṇini's rule (i. 3, 36), the root _ní_ is used in the _átmanepada_ when honour, &c., are implied, _i.e._, here the duty which a teacher performs to his pupils. He who is to be directed as to admitting a pupil is the same person who is to be directed as to teaching him, since both are the object of one and the same command. Hence the inspired sage Manu has said (ii. 140), "The Bráhman who girds his pupil with the sacrificial cord and then instructs him in the Veda, with its subsidiary _aṅgas_ and mystic doctrines, they call a spiritual teacher (_áchárya_)." Now the teaching which is the function of the teacher cannot be fulfilled without the learning which is the function of the pupil, and therefore the very injunction to teach implies and establishes a corresponding obligation to learn, since the influencer's efforts fail without those of one to be influenced. If you object that this view does not make reading the Veda the object of definite injunction, I reply, What matters it to us if it is not? For even if there is no reason for us to admit a separate injunction for reading the Veda, it will still remain perpetually enjoined as a duty, because the passage which mentions it is a perpetual _anuváda_ or "supplementary repetition."[259] Therefore the former _primâ facie_ argument and its answer, which were given before under the idea that there was a definite injunction to read the Veda, must now be discussed in another way to suit this new view. Now the _primâ facie_ argument was that the study of Mímáṃsá, not being authoritatively enjoined, is not to be commenced; the "conclusion" was that it is to be commenced as being thus authoritatively enjoined.