Ancient Indian Education: An Inquiry into its Origin, Development, and Ideals c4.184

c4.184

William Ward gives us² some interesting sidelights on Brāhmanic education as he found it, especially in Bengal, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He says that Hindu colleges or schools were called ‘Chutooshpathee’, that is, the place where four śāstras were studied. These four were grammar, law, the purāṇas, and the darśanas (or philosophy). This word was corrupted to ‘Chouparee’. The places of learning were usually built of clay, and consisted sometimes of three rooms and sometimes of eight or ten, in two rows, with a reading-room open on all sides at the farther end. These huts were frequently erected at the expense of the teacher, who not only solicited alms to raise the building, but also to feed his pupils. Ward says that three kinds of Brāhmanic schools existed in Bengal. In the first, grammar and poetry as well as the purāṇas and smṛitis were studied; in the second kind the law works and the purāṇas; and in the third the Nyāya Darśana, or logic. Select works were read and explained, but there was no instruction by lectures. The lessons were committed to memory and then explained by the teacher. In other parts of India, he says, colleges were not common, but individuals at their houses taught grammar, and mendicant Brāhmans taught the Vedas and other Śāstras at the maṭhas, or monastic institutions, where they rested. No fees were received from the pupils, but they received presents from them. Unless patronized by a rich man the subsistence of the teacher was in most cases a scanty one. Pupils were generally over twelve years of age, and were generally maintained by their parents, and resided either at the college or at the house of some neighbour. In Benares Ward found 83 maṭhas and 1371 pupils. The average number of pupils to each teacher was 16 or 17. Some of these schools studied the Veda, some only grammar, some studied poetry, some the Vedānta, some logic and law, and some astronomy. Ward also gives lists of schools at Nadia and Calcutta, and mentions many other places where Sanskrit schools existed.