Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c12.s6.56

c12.s6.56

**Teaching was Individual.** Lastly, the system of teaching was necessarily individual. The teacher had to address himself separately to the instruction of each pupil. The occasions when anything was explained to all the pupils together were comparatively few in number. The need of bestowing individual attention upon the pupils placed a natural limit to the number of such pupils which a teacher could accept and hence determined the size of these domestic schools of Ancient India. Sometimes, as is indicated in a passage in Manu [ii, 208], the son of the teacher would help his father by undertaking some of his work and there was also the custom in later times of senior pupils doing the same, but these makeshifts did not materially alter the conditions which limited the number of admissions to such schools. Even the physical capacity of the preceptor's home to accommodate pupils must have operated as a material factor in determining the number to be admitted.