Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c28.24

c28.24

**Democracy of Learning.** We thus see that youths of all sorts and conditions of life, of different classes and castes, had all their divisions and distinctions merged in the democracy of learning. Princes and nobles, merchants, tailors, the poor students who were maintained by charity and could not pay their tuition fees—all rubbed shoulders with one another as fellow-disciples of a common school and teacher. The poor students had to undergo daily a course of exacting and low kind of menial service for the school, but the recognition of the dignity of all honest labour secured to them a status of equality with its aristocratic section. What further levelled all distinctions within the school was the insistence upon certain standards of simplicity and discipline in life to which all its members had to submit. The Prince of Benares is sent on to Takkasīlā for his studies with the modest equipment given him by his own royal father of "a pair of one-soled sandals, a sunshade of leaves, and a thousand pieces of money" as his teacher's fees, of which not a single piece he could retain for his private use [No. 252 cited above]. Thus the prince enters his school as a poor man, divested of all riches. The same fact is pointed to by the story of Prince Juṇha of Benares who, accidentally breaking the alms-bowl of a Brahman by colliding with him in nocturnal darkness, was asked to pay him the price of a meal as a compensation. The Prince then said to the Brahman: " 'I cannot now give you the price of a meal, Brāhman; but I am Prince Juṇha, son of the King of Kāsī, and when I come to my kingdom, you may come to me and ask for the money' " [iv, 96]. This shows that there was no money left with a prince which he might spend as he liked. Nor did the offences of princes escape their usual punishment. On the offence of a prince being reported to the teacher (the offence being taking some sweets from a vendor's basket without paying for them) "he caused two lads to take the young fellow by his two hands, and smote him thrice upon the back with a bamboo stick, bidding him take care not to do it again" [No. 252].