PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 267* 



[priests] of Japan are to be credited with being mainly instrumental in 

 spreading a knowledge of the rudiments of education throughout the length 

 and breadth of the Empire." 

 In his Embassy to Ava Syme writes : 



"All kioums or monasteries are seminaries, in which boys are taught 

 their letters and instructed in moral and religious duties." 



To like effect, from a work entitled The Burman, by Shway Yeo, 

 we learn that 



" When a boy has reached the age of eight or nine years he goes as a mat- 

 ter of course to the Pohngyee Kyoung [Monastic School]. It is open to all 

 alike to the poor fisherman's son as well as to the scion of princely 

 blood." 



And the Catholic missionary Sangermano testifies similarly : im- 

 plying, also, that this education given by the priests is nominally 

 in preparation for the priesthood, since the students all put on 

 " the habit of a Talapoin " during the period of their education. 

 The Mahometans, too, yield evidence. At the present time in 

 Cairo the university is in a mosque. 



Illustrative facts taken from the accounts of extinct and de- 

 cayed civilizations in the Old World, may be next grouped to- 

 gether some of them mere hints and others sufficiently full. 



Concerning ancient India, Dutt states that education consisted 

 of learning the Vedas, and that in the later as in the earlier peri- 

 ods it was under the priests. He also says : 



" There were Parishads or Brahmanic settlements for the cultivation of 

 learning . . . and young men went to these Parishads to acquire learning." 

 To this there must be added the significant fact that in the Epic 

 Period {ca. b. c. 1400 to 1000) 



''Besides these Parishads, individual teachers established what would be 

 called private schools in Europe, and often collected round themselves 

 students from various parts of the country. . . . Learned Brahmans who 

 had retu'ed to forests in their old age often collected such students round 

 them, and much of the boldest speculations in the Epic Period has pro- 

 ceeded from these sylvan and retired seats of sanctity and learning." 



Taken in conjunction with the preceding statements this last 

 statement shows us how teaching was in the beginning exclusively 

 concerned with religious doctrines and rites, and how there event- 

 ually began to arise a teaching which, in some measure detached 

 from the religious institutions, at the same time entered upon 

 other subjects than the religious. 



A kindred, if less elaborated, system existed in ancient Persia. 



" It is pretty clear that the special training of boys for future callings 

 went hand in hand with their religious education, and that it was chiefly 

 regulated according to the profession of the father. ... It was evidently 

 also no uncommon practice to commit children to the care of a priest for 

 training and instruction in the same manner as the Indian Brahmins were 

 wont to do." 



