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

XI] ACHIEVEMENTS AND FAILURES. 247 accomplish it. The available evidence is rather meagre to form a definite judgment in this connection. We come across several masterful personalities, in different walks of life in ancient India, but how far they were typical of their age we do not know. Hindu achieve- ments, however, in the different walks of life and branches of knowledge were fairly of a high order in ancient India down to the 6th century A.D., and this would hardly have been possible if the products of the educational system were not masterful personalities. Things however changed for the worse from the 6th century A. D.; Brahmacharya discipline became nominal when a vast majority of students began to marry at a very early age; growth of independent judgment became stunted with the growing veneration for the past and its time-hallowed traditions. Self- confidence and self-respect disappeared in a great measure when society suffered from the convulsions of sudden foreign invasions and long alien rule, frequently imposing a hated religion and strange culture with the aid of the sword. We must not judge the success of the ancient Indian educational system in building personality of students by the conclusions based upon its products at the advent of the British rule. Success in the Preservation and Spread of Culture and Literature : Friends and foes have alike admitted that the ancient Indian system of education has been eminently successful in its aim of the preservation of ancient literary and cultural heritage. Very few of the Vedic works have been lost. It is indeed a wonder how so vast a literature could have been preserved without the help of the art of writing for the task. Among post-Vedic works too, the number of valuable books lost is not considerable. And here also the losses would have been practically insignificant if the destruc-