ABSTRACT
A number of inscriptions on a variety of seals still remain to be deciphered, but they clearly relate to some form of mercantile activity during this period. Sanskrit became the language of the learned brahmins and of any official proclamations; and a popular form of it, namely Prakrit, took its place with a number of local variations in the towns and the villages. The educational system has always been closely linked with the class structure. Brahmanical forms of education were becoming more and more theological in content as time went on, and their institutions were increasingly restricted to the use of the brahmins. The ‘classical’ tradition of education in India developed into a regularized system of teaching and learning by oral repetition and written reproduction. Professor J. H. Hutton, first writing in 1946, claimed that there were some thirty different groups of languages spoken in India, and that each group consisted of from one to five or more different vernaculars.
