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

X] PERIOD-WISE SURVEY 241
students continued to maintain themselves by begging
if necessary ; the number of teachers eager to follow
the high code of the profession, which enjoined free
tuition, still continued to be very large. Society's
earnestness for education was thus remarkable.
**Educational Defects of the Age :-**Though thus
higher education continued to prosper, the education
of the masses suffered during this period. Upanayana
now completely disappeared from Kshatriyas and
Vaishyas ; this gave a serious blow to their cultural
and literary education, reduced the percentage of
literacy among them and made their education very
narrow. Useful arts and professions began to be
regarded as plebian and were boycotted by the higher
sections of Brahmanas ; as the services of the best
intellect in society were no longer available for the
development of arts and crafts, they ceased to make
any progress worth the name. Growing orthodoxy of
the age disapproved of dissection and condemned the
pursuit of agriculture on the ground that it involved
killing of insects at the time of ploughing. Medical
education in the course of time became less efficient ;
surgery went out of vogue and agriculture became a neg-
lected and plebian profession. The marriageable age of
girls was further lowered during this period ; girls were
ordinarily married at the age of 10 or 11. This natural-
ly gave a death blow to the female education. A few
ladies no doubt appear as poetesses during this period ;
they were however exceptions rather than the rule.
Education could not reach the masses as the medium
of higher instruction was Sanskrit, which was no
longer the spoken tongue. No serious or concerted
effort was made to develop literature in vernaculars in
order to facilitate the infiltration of knowledge to the
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