Education in Ancient India c12.s1.11

c12.s1.11

Buddhism and Primary Education: It is well known that in modern Burma Buddhist monasteries afford valuable help in spreading literacy, as a result of which the percentage of male literate population in that country was as high as 38 even in 1902. It is therefore not improbable that what Buddhist monasteries are doing in modern Burma may have been done by them in ancient India as well. In its early history, however, there is no evidence to show that Buddhism was interesting itself in education of laymen. With the rise of the Mahāyāna school in the early centuries of the Christian era a great change took place, and Buddhist monasteries began to undertake systematically the education of laymen as well. The accounts of the Chinese travellers, however, leave the impression that Buddhist monasteries were mainly concerned with higher education. It is however not improbable that the Chinese travellers may not have referred to their work in the sphere of primary education, because they were not interested in it. We must further remember that primary education was a more integral part of higher education than is the case now, and so could not have been altogether neglected by the teachers engaged in higher education. Secular students, who used to serve their monk teachers as pages giving them water, food, etc., appear from I-tsing's account to have been students of primary rather than secondary education.¹ We may therefore conclude that in smaller monasteries where higher education was not imparted, monks may have engaged themselves in primary education. There is however no definite evidence on the point.