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

176 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch..
used to spend about six months in mastering them.
Then about a year was spent in mastering elementary
arithmetic. Down to c. 250 A.D. Prakrits were in
ascendancy ¹ and so students must have spent some
time in mastering them. After about 250 A. D. Sans-
krit regained its position and even primary education
became to some extent influenced by it. During
the later stages of primary education boys used to
study the Sūtras of Pāṇini and some other simple
grammatical works from the age of 8 to 11.²
**The Method of Teaching :—**The present generation
cannot easily imagine the methods of teaching in
primary schools in an age when paper and cheap text
books were unknown. Boys of the rich used to
write on wooden boards in some kind of colour.
There is a sculpture in the Peshawar Museum
representing the Buddha in his primary school as
holding a rectangular board in his hand and engaged
in writing upon it.³ Poorer students used to write on
ground, covered with sand or dust. There was no
pencil ; they used pointed sticks or their own fingers
for writing the alphabet. The latter method incidently
trained the muscles, the necessity of which is advocated
in the Montessori method. The teacher used to write
1 During the period c. 250 B.C. to c. 250 A D. most of the
public documents are seen to be composed in Pali or Prakrits. Sans-
krit appears in inscriptions very rarely. So this period is regarded
as a period of the ascendancy of Prakrits ; there is a tradition to the
effect that the Sātavāhana kings of the Deccan had decreed that all
their public documents should be in Prakrit alone (Kāvyamīmāṁsā,
p. 50). This tradition is confirmed by the inscriptions of the house.
The Guptas were champions of Sanskrit and had decreed that Sans-
krit should be spoken even in their harems, (Ibid, p. 50). Their
records are all in Sanskrit.
2 I-tsing, chap. XXXIV.
3 A. S. R., 1903-4, pp. 246-7 and Pl. LXVI, 1.