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

VI] HIGHER LITERARY EDUCATION 161 says the Chinese traveller, 'for I have myself met such men.¹ In an age when books were very rare, it was but meet that great emphasis should have been laid on the development of memory. Special devices to help the memory : Though the memory of the average student was much better trained and developed than is the case now, the authors and educationalists left no stone unturned to lighten its burden. Ancient Indian educationalists had realised that rhime makes an appeal to æsthetic sensibility and facilitates the task of memorising. They therefore decided to utilise its help in the teaching work by composing text books in verse. Even dictionaries and elementary books on grammar were composed in verse. The development of the Sūtra style, where conclusions are stated in short and pithy sentences, is also due to the exigencies of the schools and colleges, the students of which had to rely more on their memory than on books and notes for recalling the contents of the works once studied by them. Erroneous Impression about Cramming : The fact that the modern Vedic Pandit does not know the meaning of the hymns he recites with flawless accuracy, has led to an erroneous impression that mere cramming was encouraged by the ancient Indian educational system. Such however was not the case. We have already shown how for many centuries even Vedic scholars could expound the meaning of the hymns they had committed to memory ; it was owing to the growth of the Vedic literature and the imperative necessity of committing the whole of it to memory, that it was reluctantly decided to assign the memo-

1. P. 183. 11