Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c28.s1.30

c28.s1.30

**Benares as a Centre of Education : Its School of Music.** Next to Takkasilā ranks Benares as a seat of learning. It was, however, largely the creation of the ex-students of Takkasilā who set up as teachers at Benares [Nos. 130, 185, etc.], and carried thither the culture of that cosmopolitan educational centre which was moulding the intellectual life of the whole of India. Subjects in the instruction of which Takkasilā held the monopoly were being gradually introduced into Benares. We find established there schools for the teaching of spells and magic charms by students trained from Takkasilā [ii, 99]. For the study of the ordinary subjects there were of course established many schools [i, 464]. Benares, however, was not without its own alumni as educationists. There are several references to teachers of world-wide fame with the usual number of 500 pupils to teach [i, 239; iii, 18 and 233]. The son of a Brahman magnate worth eighty crores is educated in Benares [iv, 237]. There were again certain subjects in the teaching of which Benares seems to have specialized. There is a reference, for instance, to a School of Music presided over by an expert who was "the chief of his kind in all India" [No. 243]. With all this, the inferiority of Benares to Takkasilā as a seat of learning is apparent from the fact that there are hardly to be found many references in the Jātakas to the movement of foreign scholars towards that city for education in different subjects, as we find in such abundance in respect of the other city.