The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s12.40

v2.c40.s12.40

The business of teaching³ was doubtless carried on by many of the householders, as well as by those who had passed this stage. For the early Vedic period we have no indication of anything corresponding to the later Maṭh, where large bodies of teachers and pupils were united in a loose form of monastic life. We seem to find nothing more than individual teachers attracting a larger or smaller number of pupils; the ideal seems to have been that a true student must dwell in his teacher’s house (*antevāsin*), and this fact alone would negative large bodies. The epic tradition⁴ seems to suggest that five was a maximum. From this simple relationship may be explained a dominant feature of the Buddhist and later monastic system, the free right of any person who had entered on a course of study to abandon it. The development of monastic systems which soon became common to all sects was furthered by the rise of Buddhism, though it need not be held to have been a specific Buddhist innovation, for it may easily have risen spontaneously among Buddhists Jains and Brahmans alike as the outcome of their competition for public favour.