Education in Ancient India c13.17

c13.17

Success in developing Personality : The development of personality was the third aim of the educational system and let us see how far it was able to accomplish it. The available evidence is rather meagre to form a definite judgment in this connection. We come across several masterful personalities in different walks of life in ancient India, but how far they were typical of their age we do not know. Hindu achievements, however, in the different walks of life and branches of knowledge were fairly of a high order in ancient India down to the 6th century A.D., and this would hardly have been possible if the products of the educational system were not masterful personalities. Things however changed for the worse from the 6th century A. D.; Brahmacharya discipline became nominal when a vast majority of students began to marry at a very early age; growth of independent judgment became stunted with the growing veneration for the past and its time-hallowed traditions. Self-confidence and self-respect disappeared in a great measure when society suffered from the convulsions of sudden foreign invasions and long alien rule, frequently imposing a hated religion and strange culture with the aid of the sword. We must not judge the success of the ancient Indian educational system in building personality of students by the conclusions based upon its products at the advent of the British rule.