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

III] THE TEACHER AND THE STUDENT 69
promote self-control, discipline the will and facilitate the
formation of good habits. The complaint that they were
too ascetic is not true; students were required only to
control their passions and desires and not to kill them,
as was recommended in the case of ascetics. Strict
celibacy was insisted upon, but that was for the purpose
of promoting concentration in studies and the development
of the body. At the end of the course, students were
enjoined to marry. At Sparta students' food was both
plain and scanty. In India it was only plain; the educa-
tionalists had realised that the body is developed and
built up during the childhood and adolescence and have
therefore permitted students to take as much food as was
demanded by the needs of their developing constitution. In
the light of these facts the observation of a recent writer
that the student life in ancient India was very severe
because it required a stay at a stranger's place, demanded
a beggar's or a menial's life and denied all pleasures of
life¹ will appear to be considerably wide of the mark.
Society did not regard the student life as a proper period
for enjoying the pleasures of life. Its standards of plain
living also were naturally much different from those of
the modern age, dominated by the novel, the drama and
the cinema. Stay at a stranger's place was nothing else
than the stay at a boarding house. The beggar's life was
the mere ideal, recommended with a view to bring educa-
tion within the reach of all; it was a reality only in the
case of the poor and a mere formality in the case of the
rest. Menial duties like personal service at the teacher's
household were expected to be performed only by the
poor students, who were given free tuition by the teacher;
they were a mere formality in the case of the rest.
1 Bokil: The History of Education in India, Part I p. 151.