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

VII] PRIMARY EDUCATION 171 Kīrtanas (popular religious sermons) delivered by religious preachers, than by trying to reach the doors of a library, which was a rather rare institution. Primary education as an end in itself therefore did not appeal to ancient Indians ; they could look upon it only as a step to higher education. It therefere natur- ally does not much occupy their thoughts ; Sṛmitis say next to nothing about it. Kindergarten Stage : Problems connected with the Kindergarten stage of education did hardly engage the attention of ancient Indian thinkers. This need not surprise us, for in the West too they have been only recently tackled by educationalists. Our educationalists held that education was a serious affair and they were not very enthusiastic about com- bining it with play and games. They felt that a skilful teacher can make his lesson interesting by taking the help of the story and held that the use of the rhime was quite sufficient to make uninteresting things like multiplication tables quite attractive to the child. Like ancient thinkers in all other lands, they have not proposed any devices of the kindergarten type to make lessons attractive to the young child. PRIMARY EDUCATION IN EARLY TIMES (Upto c. 1000 B. C.) Modern Primary Education Non-existent :— It is a moot point whether the art of writing was known in the early Vedic period. Even if it was known, we must remember that its use for the preservation of sacred literature was tabooed for a long time. The latter continued to live only in the memory of scholars for several centuries. Secular literature had not yet come into existence, grammar and arithmetic were yet to be developed and