Education in Ancient India c6.33

c6.33

The Size of the Class: The income of the private teacher varied with the number of his students, and we sometimes come across rituals prescribed for getting more students. But the actual number of students reading under one teacher does not seem to have been large. The Jātakas no doubt very often state that the ‘world-renowned’ teachers of Taxila used to have 500 students reading under them; but this statement seems to be an exaggeration, suggested by the traditional number of disciples usually associated with the Buddha. For all available evidence shows that the strength of a class under one teacher was usually about 15. Nālandā used to have about a thousand teachers for its student population of not more than nine thousand. In the 11th century in the Vedic college at Ennāyiram, each teacher had only about 20 students under his charge². At Benares during the 17th century, sometimes only four and usually about 12 to 15 students used to work under one teacher³. In the 19th century the number of students under one teacher in Sanskrit schools at Nadia varied from 10 to 20¹. It therefore seems to be almost certain that the Jātaka statement about the teachers at Taxila having 500 students each is an exaggeration. The normal strength of a class was never more than 20.