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

256 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch.
in the West and in the East. In Europe too the Middle
Ages were a period of intellectual repression. Jesuitical
education also produced not creative or original but
receptive and imitative minds. The Renaissance and
Reformation movements, however, eventually succeed-
ed in establishing an era of intellectual independence
and originality in Europe; in India, on the other hand
the foreign rule and its natural consequences continued
the spirit of the Middle Ages down to the time of the na-
tional reawakening towards the end of the 19th century.
Intellect ceases to be assimilative :—Owing to its
excessive reverence for the past, the Hindu intellect
ceased to be assimilative from about 800 A. D. Hindu
sculptors assimilated Greek methods and enriched
Indian art. Early astronomers like Āryabhaṭa and
Varāhamihira were keeping themselves in touch with the
activities and achievements of the workers in the same
field outside India. Varāhamihira (c. 500 A. D.) pays
even a handsome compliment to Greek astronomers and
observes “The Greeks are no doubt Mlechhas (impure),
but they are well grounded in astronomy and are
therefore worshipped and honoured like the Ṛishis.”¹
A remarkable change for the worse took place in the
Hindu attitude towards foreign scholarship within a
couple of centuries or so after Varāhamihira’s death.
Implicit faith in the past and in the correctness of its
canonised tradition made the Hindu scholar narrow,
bigotted and conceited. Of the Hindu men of letters
of the 11th century A. D., Alberuni observes, “They
are haughty, foolish, vain, stolid and self-conceited.
According to their belief, there is no country on the
earth but theirs, no other race of men but theirs, and no
created beings beside them that have any knowledge

1. म्लेच्छा हि यवनास्तेषु सम्यक्शास्त्रमिदं स्थितम् । ऋषिवत्तेऽपि
   पूज्यन्ते······॥ Brihatsamhitā, II 14.