Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c17.54

c17.54

**Naimisha.** The most important of such hermitages was that of the *Naimisha*, a forest which was like a university. The presiding personality of the place was Śaunaka, to whom was applied the designation of *Kulapati*, sometimes defined as the preceptor of 10,000 disciples. Śaunaka attracted to Naimisha a vast concourse of learned men by his performance of a twelve years’ sacrifice, of which the most essential *aṅga* or accompaniment was the discourses and disputations of learned men on religious, philosophical, and scientific topics. In one place [ix, 37] we read of “ascetics living at Naimishāraṇya being engaged in a sacrifice lasting for twelve years”, on completion of which they set out in large numbers for visiting the various sacred shrines of the country. In another place [ib., 41] we have the same reference with the interesting additional information that in the course of that twelve years’ sacrifice, when a particular one called *Viśvajit* had been completed, the Ṛishis started for the country of the Pañchālas, and reaching there, requested the king to give them twenty-one strong and healthy calves to be given away as *dakshiṇā* for the sacrifice they had finished.