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

20 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch. educated which cannot preserve and expand its cultural heritage. Our education enabled us to do this for several centuries. Aims of Education: Some Comparative Observa- tions: It would be interesting to compare the aims and ideals of ancient Indian education with those of some other systems, both ancient and modern, both eastern and western. We therefore now proceed to do so. In ANCIENT CHINA, Confucian preached that the purpose of education should be to train each individual in his path of duty, wherein is to be prescribed most minutely every deatil of life’s occupations and relationships. If we understand duty in a sufficiently wide sense, this definition of the aim of education would appear to be very similar to that of ancient Indian educationalists. In ANCIENT GREECE as well as in REFORMATION EUROPE, the ideal of personal culture loomed large in the educational system. Ancient Indians held that the individual exists more for society than vice versa; it was therefore the function of education to acquaint the individual with the culture of the race. Personal culture was promoted by the educational system only to the extent it was possible to do so by imparting national culture. Music, painting and fine arts thus did not become subjects of general education in ancient India as they became in ancient Greece. THE SPARTAN EDUCA- TION aimed at providing the state with as many faithful and capable soldiers as possible, who would defend it with the armed hand. The existence of the Aryans in India was not a precarious one; they were not like the Spartans threatened with a slave population about ten times their own number; so their education was not naturally dominated by the military ideal in any degree. MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN EDUCATIONALISTS held that education should be primarily for piety and wisdom; some writers