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

VII] PRIMARY EDUCATION 171
Kīrtanas (popular religious sermons) delivered by
religious preachers, than by trying to reach the doors
of a library, which was a rather rare institution.
Primary education as an end in itself therefore did not
appeal to ancient Indians ; they could look upon it
only as a step to higher education. It therefere natur-
ally does not much occupy their thoughts ; Sṛmitis
say next to nothing about it.
Kindergarten Stage : Problems connected with
the Kindergarten stage of education did hardly
engage the attention of ancient Indian thinkers. This
need not surprise us, for in the West too they have
been only recently tackled by educationalists. Our
educationalists held that education was a serious
affair and they were not very enthusiastic about com-
bining it with play and games. They felt that a
skilful teacher can make his lesson interesting by
taking the help of the story and held that the use of
the rhime was quite sufficient to make uninteresting
things like multiplication tables quite attractive to the
child. Like ancient thinkers in all other lands, they
have not proposed any devices of the kindergarten
type to make lessons attractive to the young child.
PRIMARY EDUCATION IN EARLY TIMES
(Upto c. 1000 B. C.)
Modern Primary Education Non-existent :—
It is a moot point whether the art of writing was
known in the early Vedic period. Even if it was
known, we must remember that its use for the
preservation of sacred literature was tabooed for a
long time. The latter continued to live only in the
memory of scholars for several centuries. Secular
literature had not yet come into existence, grammar
and arithmetic were yet to be developed and