Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c22.38

c22.38

**A Vihāra as a Federation of different individual groups of Students and Teachers.** Since the Monastery was a federation of individual educational groups or schools, the efficiency of its organization depended upon the 'federal' principles of administration which aimed at three distinct objects, viz. (*a*) the independence and efficiency of each constituent group of pupils bound to an individual teacher, (*b*) the adjustment of relations between the different constituent groups, and (*c*) the framing of laws governing the establishment as a whole and binding upon all its members, the teachers and the taught alike. We have already dealt with the disciplines and regulations by which the first of these objects was realized, the system of relations existing between an individual teacher and his pupils united in a common pursuit of culture. We shall now deal with the methods connected with the other two objects of the federal educational institution or a religious guild.