Education in Ancient India c5.32

c5.32

**Income of the Teacher; Early Period:** We have no data to enable us to get a precise idea of the normal income of the teacher in the early period. In ancient days in India as in the West, there was no Education Department prescribing a scale of salaries, which was more or less followed in private institutions also. Educational institutions themselves came into existence only at about the 5th century A. D. We have already seen how the educational theory and practice prohibited the teacher from charging any fixed scale of fees from his students. The teacher in ancient India therefore had, as a general rule, no fixed income. We have seen already that usually he was also a priest. His income therefore consisted partly of offerings obtained by him on the occasions of rituals and sacrifices and partly of voluntary gifts given by his students either during or after their course. There was to be no stipulation for these presents; so they varied with the financial capacity of the guardians. At Taxila we learn that the 'world-renowned' teachers used to have 500 students reading under them, and that the rich ones among the latter used to offer a fee of a thousand coins.¹ This however does not enable us to get any accurate idea of the teacher's income. The number of students, 500, is conventional² and not real and we do not know whether the fee of 1000 coins offered was for one year or for the whole course, and whether it included the expenses of boarding and lodging also, which were normally offered by the Taxila teacher. We therefore can form no definite idea of the income of the teacher during the early period.