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

XI] ACHIEVEMENTS AND FAILURES. 247
accomplish it. The available evidence is rather meagre
to form a definite judgment in this connection. We
come across several masterful personalities, in different
walks of life in ancient India, but how far they were
typical of their age we do not know. Hindu achieve-
ments, however, in the different walks of life and
branches of knowledge were fairly of a high order in
ancient India down to the 6th century A.D., and this
would hardly have been possible if the products of the
educational system were not masterful personalities.
Things however changed for the worse from the 6th
century A. D.; Brahmacharya discipline became
nominal when a vast majority of students began to
marry at a very early age; growth of independent
judgment became stunted with the growing veneration
for the past and its time-hallowed traditions. Self-
confidence and self-respect disappeared in a great
measure when society suffered from the convulsions of
sudden foreign invasions and long alien rule, frequently
imposing a hated religion and strange culture with the
aid of the sword. We must not judge the success of the
ancient Indian educational system in building personality
of students by the conclusions based upon its products
at the advent of the British rule.
Success in the Preservation and Spread of Culture
and Literature : Friends and foes have alike admitted
that the ancient Indian system of education has been
eminently successful in its aim of the preservation of
ancient literary and cultural heritage. Very few of the
Vedic works have been lost. It is indeed a wonder
how so vast a literature could have been preserved
without the help of the art of writing for the task.
Among post-Vedic works too, the number of valuable
books lost is not considerable. And here also the losses
would have been practically insignificant if the destruc-