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

86 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch.
continued their education throughout the year, and had
no long vacations like those we have at present. The
present day custodians of Sanskrit learning are unaware
of any tradition about long vacations obtaining in the
past. If a student had some urgent work, he could take
leave and go home to attend to it. Those whose homes
were very near may have occasionally gone home on
some of the usual holidays. But the entire teaching
work does not seem to have been suspended for any part
of the year. Work also was not much disturbed by
different students going home at different times; for
generally speaking each student was taught separately.
The List of Holidays: We come across a system-
atic list of holidays only in post-Vedic¹ literature. But
many of these go back to very early times. Regular
holidays were four in the month at an interval of a week,
the new and full moon days and the eighth day of each
fortnight. Sympathetic interest with the inhabitants of the
locality was also responsible for the stopping of the work
sometimes, when the peace of the settlement was disturbed
by an invasion or by incursions of robbers or cattle-lifters,
or when the king or a Brahmana of the village had met
with an accident or died. Arrival of distinguished guests
led to the suspension of studies; for a good deal of the
time and energy of both the teacher and the students had
to be devoted to make the guests comfortable.
Holidays for Bad Weather, etc:—Abnormal wea-
ther conditions giving rise to untimely clouds, thunder,

(Continued from the last page)
remarrying or having recourse to Niyoga also suggests that
there used to exist no long vacations when married students
could go home and stay for sometime with their families.
Cf. III. 4.

1. G. D. S., II. 7; B. Dh. S. I. 11. Manu, IV. 100 ff.