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

VII] PRIMARY EDUCATION 175 When this ceased to be the case, the family priest or the preceptor, to whom students were sent for Vedic education, may have imparted the primary education as well; for primary education at this time was a more integral part of higher education than is the case now. Primary schools also existed in some localities; we sometimes get references to rich boys going to attend them, when their wooden slates were carried by their servants.¹ But who conducted these primary schools, or how they were financed is not known. Public institutions even for higher education had not yet been evolved, as we have seen already. Primary schools also must therefore have been private institu- tions. Literacy was very wide spread at this time; it is but natural that some of the members of the Brahmana, Kshatriya and Vaishya classes may have taken to primary education as a career. PRIMARY EDUCATION DURING c. 200 B.C. to 800 A.D. The Time of Commencement :—Primary education was assigned a definite place in the educational system during this period by the exaltation of its beginning into a religious ritual known as Aksharasvīkaraṇa (see Appendix I A), which was performed at about the age of five or six. This was the time for the beginning of primary education. Authors of this period represent the Buddha, Raghu, Lava and Kuśa as beginning their education at about this age.² The Chinese pilgrim I-tsing also found that primary education used to begin at the age of six. Scope of Primary Education :—Boys began their study with the primary and compound alphabets and 1 Kaṭāhaka Jātaka, No. 125. 2 Lalitavistāra, Canto 10; Raghuvaṁśa, Canto III, Uttara- Rāmacharit, Act II.