History of Education in Ancient India

Stung to indignation by the remark of an American writer and supported by the feeling that the world's enormous debt to India should at least be acknowledged the author of this little book has done good service to the cause of education by setting forth in a compact form an account of the ideals and practices of the ancient Hindus in relation to the immature portion of their 'community. [...] Of the correctness of his reading of the ancient authors to whom he has referred I cannot pretend to judge but it is a eomfort to feel amid the many diffculties that confront us while the thought of the West is spreading in the aged East that the grand if shadowy figures of the mighty Rishis of the past can look without diapproval on the principles and methods of modern education. [...] Hence in determining thelature of the education of the Aryans in Ancient India we shall have to consider on the one hand the original nature of the people who first entered it and on the other the nature of the country in which their inherited capacities were called into active development. [...] The clergy the knighthood and the people of Europe in the Middle ages answered in some respects to the Brahmins the Kshatriyas and the Vaisyas. [...] Learning in Europe as in India for a long time flourished under the foStering care of the clergy ; and so strong was their hold upon it that during the devlopment of the national system of education the State has often had to fight hard with the church to secure the full control of the system of education.