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

24 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch. Steps Taken to Realise the Ideal: Society also took several other important steps to realise this ideal. To ensure an adequate supply of teachers, it enjoined that teaching was a holy duty which a Brahmana was bound to discharge irrespective of the consideration as to whether any fee was likely to be received or not. It made education free and held to public opprobrium any teacher who would stipulate for fees. In order to bring education within the reach of the poorest, it not only permitted students to beg, but elevated begging into the highest duty of the student life. In order to ensure a reasonable maintenance to teachers, who were expected to devote their lives to the cause of teaching in the missionary spirit of self-sacrifice, society laid down that both the public and the state should help learned teachers and educational institutions very liberally. How these arrangements worked in practice will be explained in Chapter IV. Education a serious Proposition: Though ancient Indians held that all should normally receive the benefits of education, they have also laid down that persons who were morally and intellectually unfit to receive it should be excluded from its benefit (Nirukta, II. 4); this was a necessary precaution to avoid waste. They further point out that real scholarship cannot be obtained by dilettanish or perfunctory studies; impatience is as great an enemy of learning as self-complaceney¹. The rich and the poor have both to submit to stern discipline in order to become learned. Long continued and laborious preparation is necessary to aquire real grounding and efficiency in a subject. One who is lazy or anxious to dabble in several matters, or one who wants to have a merry time during

1. अशुश्रूषा त्वरा श्लाघा विद्यायाः शत्रवस्त्रयः। Mbh., V. 40.4.