Education in Ancient India c6.15

c6.15

Lodging and Boarding Arrangements: Let us now survey the general features of the lodging and boarding arrangements made for students. It has been already shown in Chap. II how the ideal of the Gurukula required the student to stay under his teacher's roof or in a boarding house under his direct supervision. Well-to-do teachers in famous centres of education like Taxila used to arrange for the lodging and boarding of their students in their own houses.² It must be remembered in this connection that the number of students reading under one teacher was usually not more than 15 and he could thus arrange for their lodging and boarding. When public educational institutions came into existence, they used to invariably arrange for the lodging and boarding of students in hostels specially built for the purpose. Several such hostels existed at Nālandā, Salotgi and Vikramaśilā. In these hostels, there were common messes run by the authorities through servants appointed for the purpose. Students’ rooms were sometimes provided with a stone bench to sleep upon and nitches for keeping lamps and other sundry things; this arrangement prevailed at Nālandā as will become clear by a visit to its excavations. In some places, arrangements were also made to offer free clothing and medicines; some institutions like that at Nālandā in northern India and Malkapuram in southern India used to maintain hospitals for the needs of the ‘sick students’². In some places like Salotgi, light also was supplied to students out of special endowments received for the purpose. In Bengal, till quite recent times, teachers of *tols* or Sanskrit schools used to collect subscriptions from well-to-do people in their districts and build small unpretentious mud houses for the residence of students reading under them. It is quite possible that the same practice may have prevailed in ancient times in those localities which were carrying on the work of education in their own humble way, but had not become famous centres of education like Nālandā or Ennāyiram. These boarding houses were under the direct control and management of the teachers under whom the students were working. When however teachers were unable to make such arrangements, students had to shift for themselves. Rich students would often hire their own houses.³ Poor students would often stay in temple out-houses and subsist by begging⁴.