Number of words: 605

In the ancients there was the widespread belief that one’s biological and mental makeup decided man’s capacity for education. Students were chosen on the basis of heredity and placed in slots for study according to their inborn capacities. The teacher was not a paid servant of the state or society. It was left to him to decide what course of studies had to be completed or even when students were to be admitted to such a course. It was again at the discretion of the teacher to decide who made the great and who did not. Such authority vested in one person could lead to abuse, less likely however in India where knowledge and truth were equated and where self-realisation was an important determinant in one who aspired to become a teacher. At the end of the teaching period, the student had to face an assembly of learned people and participate in a discussion. It was this assembly that put a stamp of approval on him and incidentally, also on the teacher. For the degree of competence exhibited by the student remained a reflection of the training imparted by the teacher to him.

The tests were mainly oral, testing in the lower stages only memory. Later, there was scope for originality as well. With the birth of scientific education, practical tests arose and we are told of Jivaka, a famous physician, who after the training of 7 years, was asked by way of an examination, to describe the medicinal use of all the vegetables, plants, creepers, grasses and roots that could be found within a radius of 15 miles around the city of Takshila,. Examining them for four days and then submitting the results, he informed his professor that there was hardly a single plant that did not possess some medicinal property. Patliputra was the centre for examinations in the sciences. It was after passing here that Patanjali became famous as a Shastrakara. Rajasekhara (880 AD) informs us that assemblies of learned men should be held in big cities for examining political and scientific works and should be crowned with a fillet.

Students however during the time of Pannini were probably labelled according to the number of mistakes they made in the pronunciation of sacred texts, when rote learning was the method used. The student who made one error was designated Aikanyika  – the pupil of one error. Similarly, a pupil who committed two lapses was known as a pupil of two errors. With pupils being graded up to even 14 errors, it was clear that there was a sort of ranking system in the order of merit on the result of their oral examination.

Besides this rote learning, there were also various subjects in the learning, of which memory played a far less important part than understanding, for example, Pannini’s grammar. There were studies dependent on memory, but there were others depending on understanding. As a reaction against excessive rote learning there was a movement towards critical thinking and philosophical speculation which reached its highest point in the Upanishads and Aranyakas.

Ancient teachers did not draw up a plan or a system of education whereby after finishing his course of studies, the student was eligible for a degree or a diploma. Education was considered to be a handmaid to right living, and therefore there could be no excuse for discontinuing studies till the end of one’s life, and also no use for degrees or diplomas which are seen as the end of studies and the culmination of knowledge in that particular field.

Excerpted from pages 32-34 of ‘Examinations: An Informative Update’ by M Mascarenhas.