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

XI] ACHIEVEMENTS AND FAILURES 257
or science whatever. Their haughtiness is such that if
you tell them of any science or scholar in Khūrāsān or
Persia, they will think you to be both an ignoramus
and a liar. If they travelled and mixed with other
nations, they would soon change their mind, for their
ancestors were not so narrow-minded as the present
generation is¹". In proof of the last assertion Alberuni
quotes the tribute of Varāhamihira to Greek astronomers,
quoted above. Hindus in Alberuni's time had very
good reason to feel a very deep prejudice against
Muslim scholarship; Alberuni's picture may have been
to some extent overdrawn. But the contemporary
Hindu attitude towards the Śrutis, Smṛitis and Purānas
and other works of the past, which has been discussed
above, would show that Alberuni's account of the
mentality of the contemporary Hindu scholar is
substantially true. Hindu education had ceased to
remove prejudices, explode superstitions and broaden
the mind, so as to keep it capable of receiving instruc-
tions from all quarters by the beginning of the 9th
century A. D. Hindu colonising activity, necessitating
travel abroad, had also come to an end by this time.
Some Hindu doctors are no doubt known to have
proceeded to Baghdad at the invitation of Khalifa Harun
(786 A.D.—808 A.D.) to act as chief physicians in his
hospitals²; we however do not know whether public
opinion approved of their conduct, whether they returned
home and were readmitted to Hindu society. Foreign
travel for the purpose of education and the broadening
of views became impossible when the sea voyage was
prohibited. Whether it was undertaken in earlier days
also for these objects is doubtful. There are no books
in Sanskrit literature descriptive of geography, manners
and climate of the countries adjacent to India. Nor do
the Pauranic geographers seem to have been in touch with

1. Sachau, Alberuni, I, pp. 22-23. 2. Idid, Introduction, p. 81.
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