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

260 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch.
tion for Sanskrit, society began to identify the educated
man with the classical scholar as was the case in the
Europe of the Renaissance period. But when the best
minds became engaged in expressing their thoughts in
Sanskrit, Prakrits were naturally neglected. As long as
Sanskrit was intelligible to the ordinary individual, this
was not productive of much harm. But from about
the 8th century A.D. Prakrits and vernaculars became
widely differentiated from Sanskrit, and those who were
using them began to find it difficult to understand
the latter language. Hindu educationalists did not
realise the importance of developing vernacular litera-
tures in the interest of the man in the street. Alberuni
observes, “The language in India is divided into a
neglected vernacular one, only in use among the common
people, and a classical one, only in use among the upper
and educated classes, which is much cultivated.” 1
We no doubt come across a few cases from the 13th
century onwards where provision was made for the
teaching of Telugu, Canarese and Marathi in some of
of the schools and colleges of South India, but the
general impression produced by a survey of the edu-
cational system and institutions is that society was not
alive to the importance of the teaching and development
of vernaculars in the interest of the spread of education
among the masses. Things in India were however quite
on a par with what they were in contemporary Europe,
where Latin continued to be the medium of instruction
down to the 17th century A.D. The classics dominated
the curriculum of the Public Schools in England down
to c. 1850 A.D., boys could write better Latin than
English. In the 16th century school boys were
punished for using the mother tongue, and its study
could be started in Jesuitical schools only with the
1 Sachau, I, p. 18. Some poems and dramas were written in
Prakrit, but their number was very small.