Education in Ancient India c7.s7.t6.4

c7.s7.t6.4

A.D., a temple at Bijapur received a big endowment of about 1200 acres of land for providing food and raiments to ascetics and to the pupils of Yogeśvara Paṇḍita, who was conducting a free Mīmānsā school there.¹ To judge from the endowment, the college of this Paṇḍita must have been much bigger than that at Ennāyiram. At Managoli in Bijapur district, during the latter half of the 12th century, a local temple used to maintain a grammar school where Kaumāra grammar was taught by a teacher, who was given an endowment of 20 acres of land.² At about the same time the Dakṣiṇeśvara temple authorities at Belgamve in Karnatak used to offer free boarding to students studying in the temple school.³ In 1158 A. D. there flourished at Talgund in Shimoga district a small Sanskrit college in the local Prāṇeśvara temple, where free food and education was offered to 48 students, studying the Ṛigveda, the Yajurveda, the Sāmaveda, Prābhākara-Mīmānsā, philosophy (Vedānta), linguistics (Bhāṣā-śāstra) and Canarese. The institution had employed two cooks to manage the kitchen of the boarding house. At Punnavayil in Tanjore District there existed another grammar college, attached to a local temple and endowed with 400 acres of land. As the endowment for the maintenance of this institution was larger than that enjoyed by the Ennāyiram college, it is quite likely that it may have afforded free education and food to about 500 students.⁴ South Indian Inscriptions Nos. 604, 667, 571, and 695 of 1916 record various grants for the salaries of teachers and boarding of students studying in different temple colleges in Tamil country. The last of these records is an interesting one, for it records a donation for a *Sarasvatī-bhavana* or library of a temple college in Tinevelli district. These instances of temple authorities organising Sanskrit schools and colleges are typical of the age. Many more must have existed, whose memory has not been handed down to the present times. For, down to the 18th century almost every religious centre in south India used to maintain a Sanskrit school or college. The whole country was in fact studded with them¹.