Education in Ancient India c4.7

c4.7

Steps Taken to Realise the Ideal: Society also took several other important steps to realise this ideal. To ensure an adequate supply of teachers, it enjoined that teaching was a holy duty which a Brahmana was bound to discharge irrespective of the consideration as to whether any fee was likely to be received or not. It made education free and held to public opprobrium any teacher who would stipulate for fees. In order to bring education within the reach of the poorest, it not only permitted students to beg, but elevated begging into the highest duty of the student life. In order to ensure a reasonable maintenance to teachers, who were expected to devote their lives to the cause of teaching in the missionary spirit of self-sacrifice, society laid down that both the public and the state should help learned teachers and educational institutions very liberally. How these arrangements worked in practice will be explained in Chapter IV.