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

86 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch. continued their education throughout the year, and had no long vacations like those we have at present. The present day custodians of Sanskrit learning are unaware of any tradition about long vacations obtaining in the past. If a student had some urgent work, he could take leave and go home to attend to it. Those whose homes were very near may have occasionally gone home on some of the usual holidays. But the entire teaching work does not seem to have been suspended for any part of the year. Work also was not much disturbed by different students going home at different times; for generally speaking each student was taught separately. The List of Holidays: We come across a system- atic list of holidays only in post-Vedic¹ literature. But many of these go back to very early times. Regular holidays were four in the month at an interval of a week, the new and full moon days and the eighth day of each fortnight. Sympathetic interest with the inhabitants of the locality was also responsible for the stopping of the work sometimes, when the peace of the settlement was disturbed by an invasion or by incursions of robbers or cattle-lifters, or when the king or a Brahmana of the village had met with an accident or died. Arrival of distinguished guests led to the suspension of studies; for a good deal of the time and energy of both the teacher and the students had to be devoted to make the guests comfortable. Holidays for Bad Weather, etc:—Abnormal wea- ther conditions giving rise to untimely clouds, thunder,

(Continued from the last page) remarrying or having recourse to Niyoga also suggests that there used to exist no long vacations when married students could go home and stay for sometime with their families. Cf. III. 4.

1. G. D. S., II. 7; B. Dh. S. I. 11. Manu, IV. 100 ff.