The Study of Indian History and Culture - Vol - 13 of 18 General Editor - Shripad Kulkarni The Indians are fortunate in that they can claim unbroken continuity of their culture right from the hoary antiquity And we have a further surprise in store for us The Vedas, the foundational scriptures ol mankind, have come down to our forefathers of 1.000 years before, from their ancestors of the still earlier epoch The point is that the perfection of the Civilization that the Vedas represent is still a thing ol greater antiquity So the culture which the Vedas now portray is deducible from that of the earlier One The Vedas, therefore represent the stage of perfection which their culture had reached As that great French philosopher Voltaire has summed up in a very pithy and appropriate sentence VIZ Of the Indians had remained unknown to the Tartars and to us, they would have been the happiest people in the world The percentage of school-going children then was the same as now, namely 35% of the total school-going population. More than 68% of these school-going boys belonged to the classes now designated as backward Even untouchables were teachers then. A fair number of girls used to get education in schools separate from the boys Education was not denied to any one who desired by the wily Brahmins as is the general impression Even the Vedas were taught to whosoever showed aptitude and inclination to undergo the hard and rigorous discipline to learn these. Even the boys from the Brahmana families were denied Vedic education if they did not undergo the rigorous discipline imposed on such students In contrast in England the percentage of school going population was hardly 5% There had arisen a Newton among the Pro. Play Brahmanas five thousand years ago Fair (FOR London) Published on 1997 Available in ENGLISH and MARATHI Hardcover, Pages: 380 Publisher: Shri Bhagwan Vedvyasa Itihasa Samshodhana Mandir (BHISHMA)