Education in Ancient India c13.s1.24

c13.s1.24

Education of Masses neglected in later Times: At the time when India was making rapid strides in the different domains of knowledge, her education was broad-based. In ancient Athens one in ten and in ancient Sparta one in twenty five received education,¹ and women’s education was altogether neglected. The case was much different in India down to the commencement of the Christian era. Literacy among the Aryans was probably as high as 60 per cent in the days of Aśoka. Anxious thought and care were also bestowed on female education. Things, however, gradually changed for the worse in the first millennium of the Christian era. The education of women began to be neglected. Kshatriyas and Vaishyas began to become progressively illiterate. It is true that in Europe also the masses were little more than barbarous and took more naturally to warfare than to schooling down to the end of the Middle Ages.² We can, however, hardly derive any consolation from this comparison, for the prevalent illiteracy in India was due to degeneration from a more creditable condition, obtaining in earlier centuries.