Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c28.s1.26

c28.s1.26

**Foreign Travel as completing Education.** The point of some of the examples cited above which should not be missed in this connection is that they demonstrate how the students of those days after their graduation undertook an extensive foreign travel to give a practical turn to their theoretical studies at the colleges, and qualify themselves for the life in the world by broadening the range of their experience and deepening their insight into human affairs by a first-hand study of the diverse manners and customs prevailing in the different parts of the country. Besides its direct educational value, this post-graduate travelling as giving a finishing touch to a student’s training was encouraged and even insisted upon for another very substantial reason, especially in the cases of the students of the well-to-do classes who were brought up in luxury. This was to build up the physique or the physical constitution of the student by inuring him to the hardships of travelling, to make him “endure heat or cold” and stand all weathers and climates. And we have already referred to the recognition of the utility of the institution as a means of moral education especially of the students of the royal and aristocratic houses, who were sent to distant centres for their education, so that by their necessary travelling and living under strange conditions in foreign parts, they might be more humanized, with their native pride of position and spirit of exclusiveness crushed out of them under the spirit of a thorough-going democracy and fraternity which a seat of learning would always breathe [No. 252].