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

20 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch.
educated which cannot preserve and expand its cultural
heritage. Our education enabled us to do this for
several centuries.
Aims of Education: Some Comparative Observa-
tions: It would be interesting to compare the aims and
ideals of ancient Indian education with those of some other
systems, both ancient and modern, both eastern and
western. We therefore now proceed to do so. In ANCIENT
CHINA, Confucian preached that the purpose of education
should be to train each individual in his path of duty,
wherein is to be prescribed most minutely every deatil of
life’s occupations and relationships. If we understand
duty in a sufficiently wide sense, this definition of the aim
of education would appear to be very similar to that of
ancient Indian educationalists. In ANCIENT GREECE as
well as in REFORMATION EUROPE, the ideal of personal
culture loomed large in the educational system. Ancient
Indians held that the individual exists more for society
than vice versa; it was therefore the function of education
to acquaint the individual with the culture of the race.
Personal culture was promoted by the educational system
only to the extent it was possible to do so by imparting
national culture. Music, painting and fine arts thus did
not become subjects of general education in ancient India
as they became in ancient Greece. THE SPARTAN EDUCA-
TION aimed at providing the state with as many faithful
and capable soldiers as possible, who would defend it
with the armed hand. The existence of the Aryans in
India was not a precarious one; they were not like the
Spartans threatened with a slave population about ten
times their own number; so their education was not
naturally dominated by the military ideal in any degree.
MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN EDUCATIONALISTS held that education
should be primarily for piety and wisdom; some writers