Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c28.11

c28.11

**Taxila as a Centre of Learning.** Takkasilā was the most famous seat of learning. It attracted scholars from different and distant parts of India. Numerous references in the Jātakas show how thither flocked students from far-off Benares [i, 272, 285, 409 ; ii, 85, 87 ; iv, 50, 224 ; v, 127, 263, etc.], Rājagaha [iii, 238 ; v, 177, 247], Mithilā [iv, 316 ; vi, 347], Ujjenī [iv, 392], and Kosala [iii, 115], from the " Central Region " [ib.], and from the Sivi [v, 210], and Kuru [iii, 399 ; v, 457] kingdoms in the " North Country " [i, 356]. The fame of Takkasilā as a seat of learning was of course due to that of its teachers. They are always spoken of as being " world-renowned ", being authorities, specialists, and experts in the subjects they professed. Of one such teacher we read : " Youths of the warrior and brahmin castes came from all India to be taught the arts by him " [iii, 158]. It is the presence of scholars of such acknowledged authority and widespread reputation that made Taxila the intellectual capital of the Indian continent from the different and distant parts of which there was a steady movement of qualified students drawn from all classes and ranks of society towards Taxila to complete the education they had in the schools of their native places. Thus the various centres of learning in the different parts of the country became affiliated, as it were, to the educational centre, or the central university, of Taxila which exercised a kind of intellectual suzerainty over the wide world of letters in India.