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

100 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch. for government views and policies. The state in ancient India, however, did not attempt to control education, because it was liberally subsidising it. There were no Directors of Public Instruction and Inspectors and Deputy Inspectors of Schools to dictate and control educational policy. Even when grants were given to learned Brahmanas, there was no stipulation that they would be withdrawn if free education was not given by the donees. It was the king's duty to make such grants. It was the Brahmana's duty to teach, even when there were no grants. Each side was to perform its duty though there were no specific stipulations. Even when hundreds of villages were given to the Nālandā University by Hindu Gupta emperors, they did not stipulate that Buddhism should adopt a particular policy towards the religion of the donors. Monks at Nālandā declined to revise the traditional rules of seniority in order to show some courtesy concession to a royal donor, who desired to be regarded as the seniormost monk, when he had joined the church as a layman.² There was as perfect a toleration in education as there was in religion. Kings were giving grants to all institutions, without caring to control their policy or curricula. Of course this was not an unmixed blessing, as will be shown in the last chapter; but it cannot be denied that it helped the cause of free educational development. Government Help elsewhere : The failure to organise an educational department might appear to the modern reader as a blemish in the ancient

1. Pinkewitch, New Education in Soviet Russia.
2. Narasimhagupta Bālāditya wanted this concession, but it was refused. He was regarded as the seniormost only among lay followers. Waters, II, pp. 164-5.