Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c24.21

c24.21

**Details of Construction.** Vihāras were fitted with doors, doorposts, and lintel, with arrangements for bolts, lock, and key; with windows made with railings, network, or slips of wood, and window-blinds and shutters; solid benches against the wall of a room or under the verandah against the outside wall of the house [*Chullavagga*, vi, 2]; "verandahs, covered terraces, inner verandahs and overhanging eaves" together with "movable screens" "lest the verandahs might be too public" [ib., 3, 5]; halls or sheds for the *Kaṭhina* ceremony with a high basement, against inundation, with facing of brick, stone, or wood and flight of steps protected by balustrade [ib., v, 11, 6]; "service-hall" [ib., vi, 3, 6]; cloisters on high basement with solid facing, steps with protecting balustrade, and railing, and a separate waiting hall; bath-house similarly constructed and fitted with door, bolt, lock, and key, arrangements for hot baths, necessary furniture, solid flooring, and facing of the walls as antidote to damp, drains to carry off the water, antechamber [ib., v, 14], and sometimes a separate hot bathroom, Jantāghara, furnished with clay (which might be scented) for protection against heat, and chairs where hot or steam baths were taken, with an attached cell or cooling room [ib., viii, 8, 2; v, 14, 3, and *Mahāv.*, i, 25, 12]; wells (to provide against want of water in the bathroom) lined with solid facing with a lid to it, a shed over it properly built and furnished with troughs and basins, and water vessels of brass, wood, or skin, while the water was raised "by the use of a long pole balanced as a lever, of a bullock-machine, or of a wheel and axle" [*Chullav.*, v, 16]; and, lastly, the store-house built as a separate house with necessary fittings for securing the stores [ib., vi, 3, 8], where sometimes shelter was given to outsiders overtaken by rain and storm on their promising to provide the Saṁgha with a meal [*Mahāv.*, vi, 33], while sometimes the stores of the Saṁgha were kept on laymen's premises [ib., 33, 5].