Ancient Indian Education: An Inquiry into its Origin, Development, and Ideals c9.18

c9.18

An ideal of Indian life which has a close bearing on education is that which has been happily termed *naissance oblige*.¹ The evils of the caste system are indeed manifest, and have already been referred to; but we must not overlook the fact that it has also had its useful side, and from the educational point of view it has brought about a vast system of vocational training which was made possible by the fact that a boy’s future career was determined from his very birth, for upon his birth depended both his duties and privileges in life. Moreover, this vocational training was permeated by the idea of the family, and was carried out under conditions which brought it into close contact with life. The decay of the caste system, with all its attendant evils, seems inevitable under the conditions of modern life. But it is to be hoped that as it passes some of its nobler phases may be preserved, and that the vocational idea of education which it has fostered may not be lost. The tendency to extend a uniform system and so to reduce all education to the dead level of a code-bound type is already at work in India, and the ideal of vocational training needs to be made much more prominent. How to develop a system of vocational education which may incorporate the best elements of the old ideals with the claims of modern education is no easy problem, but it is one which will have eventually to be faced.