Education in Ancient India c11.s1.26

c11.s1.26

Was there co-education? The modern reader would be anxious to know whether co-education prevailed in the past. Our sources however throw but dim light on the subject. From the *Mālatīmādhava* of Bhavabhūti, written in the 8th century A. D., we learn that the nun Kāmandakī was educated along with Bhūrivasu and Devarāta at a famous centre of education.¹ This would show that if not in Bhavabhūti's time, at least some centuries earlier, sometimes boys and girls were educated together while receiving higher education. In the *Uttara-Rāma-charit* also (of the same author) we find Ātreyī receiving her education along with Kuśa and Lava (Act II). The stories of Kahoda and Sujātā and Ruru and Pramadvarā, narrated in Purāṇas, would also point to co-education. They would further show that at a time when girls were being married at an advanced age and receiving co-education, sometimes love-marriages used to take place as a consequence of it. When however there were competent lady teachers, parents may have preferred to send their daughters to read under them; but when they were not available, they may have sent their wards to read under male teachers, and necessarily along with male students. In an age, which looked upon love marriages as nothing abnormal,² co-education need not have frightened the parents. What percentage of girls received co-education is a question which we cannot answer in the present state of our knowledge. It could not however have been very large.