Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c28.14

c28.14

**Tuition Fees.** The students were usually admitted to instruction by their teachers on payment in advance of their entire tuition fees. A fixed sum seems to have been specified for the purpose at Taxila, amounting to 1,000 pieces of money [i, 272, 285; iv, 50, 224, etc.]. In lieu of paying the fees in cash, a student was allowed to pay them in the shape of services to his teacher [*cf. Mil.*, vi, 11]. To this class apparently belonged the majority of the students who "attended on their teacher by day" and received instruction at night. We read of a school of 500 Brahman pupils whose duties were, among others, to gather firewood from the forests for their master [i, 317-18]. Sometimes, a student would prefer to devote his whole time to studies without sparing any time for such services or menial work, while at the same time he was too poor to be able to pay the teacher's fees in cash in advance. In such a case the student was trusted to pay the fees after the completion of his education. We read of one such student, a Brahman boy of Benares, who, after completing his education at Taxila, paid his teacher's fees by begging for them in distant countries beyond the Ganges. The fees are described to be "seven nikkhas" or a few ounces of gold, which may indicate that the teacher's fees were paid in gold in that time [iv, 224]. It may be recalled in this connection that, under the Brahmanical system, it was the more usual practice for the *brahmachārin* to pay fees to his teacher only when he becomes a *snātaka* and ends his studentship.