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

212 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch. received co-education is a question which we cannot answer in the present state of our knowledge. It could not however have been very large. Extent of Female Education : It is not easy to determine the extent of female education during the period we are reviewing here. Vedic literature has preserved rituals to be performed by parents anxious for the birth of scholarly daughters¹; it would therefore follow that many parents must have been anxious that their daughters should become cultured and accom- plished ladies. Education of girls could not have been neglected by the ordinary well-to-do father. Upa- nayana ritual was also obligatory for girls, and this must have ensured the imparting of a certain amount of Vedic and literary education to the girls of all the Aryan classes. We may therefore presume that as long as Upanayana ritual was performed in the case of girls, and the custom of child marriage had not taken root in society, girls of well-to-do families must be receiving fairly good education. Such continued to be the case down to c. 500 B. C. SECTION II. FEMALE EDUCATION FROM c. 200 B.C. TO c. 1200 A.D. Deterioration in religious Status : Female educa- tion received a great setback during this period primarily owing to the deterioration of the religious status of women. During the earlier period, Upanayana ceremony was as much obligatory for girls as it was ¹ अथ य इच्छेद्दुहिता मे पंडिता जायेत सर्वमायुरियादिति तिलौदनं पाचयित्वा सर्पिष्मन्तमश्नीयाताम् । Br. Up., VI, 4. 17.