Education in Ancient India c9.s3.11

c9.s3.11

Primary Schools and Teachers : Only occasionally our sources refer to primary schools and teachers; they are usually described as *lipiśālās* (alphabet schools) and dārakāchāryas (teachers of little children) respectively.¹ Public schools even for higher education did not exist down to c. 400 A. D.; it is no wonder that they should have been very scarce also for primary education for a long time. Education was thus mostly imparted by private teachers in private schools. Family priests continued to impart primary education for a fairly long time. From about the 5th century A. D. a great impetus was given to higher education by the founding of a number of public schools and colleges. This must have given an indirect impetus to primary education also; for the less capable products of these institutions may have taken to primary education as a career. Primary teachers, by no means highly qualified for their task, figured in Kashmir society during the 10th century A. D.;² the same may have been the case elsewhere also. Sometimes primary teachers were employed by the rich to educate their family children and the children of other villagers were also allowed to read along with them. If a village had not a rich person to engage a teacher on his own account, a number of guardians used to cooperate in engaging the services of a teacher, each paying according to his ability. In the majority of cases, however, private teachers used to start schools on their own initiative, relying upon the uncertain income of voluntary fees and contributions from the guardians of students. The average income of a teacher in Bengal just before the advent of the British rule was more or less equal to the emoluments of the village accountant;³ the same may have been the case throughout the earlier history. In some localities in Madras presidency teachers used to receive grain-shares at the time of harvest just like carpenters or smiths; this system does not seem to have been universal,¹ for the services of a teacher were not required by every villager, as was the case with those of a smith or potter. Primary teachers usually belonged to the families of the village accountants, priests, writers (Kayasthas) or traders, which were invariably literate. Like the teachers of the Vedas, they were not exclusively Brahmanas. This was the case even in the Smṛiti period; for some the Smṛiti writers refer with disapproval to the custom of non-Brahmanas being the teachers of Brahmanas.