Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c28.s1.31

c28.s1.31

**Hermitages as Centres of Highest Learning.** Lastly, it is to be noted that the educational system of the times produced men of affairs as well as men who renounced the world in the pursuit of Truth. The life of renunciation indeed claimed many an ex-student of both Takkasilā and Benares. In the sylvan and solitary retreats away from the haunts of men, the hermitages served as schools of higher philosophical speculation and religious training where the culture previously acquired would attain its fruitage or a further development in a particular direction. These special schools of spiritual culture are also referred to as being composed of the standard number of 500 ascetics gathering round the personality of an individual hermit of established reputation to seek instruction as his disciples [i, 141, etc.]. We have, however, references to schools of larger sizes. We read of one which was so overcrowded with zealous pupils that the chief had to get other hermitages established by his seven senior pupils to relieve the congestion but to no purpose, for the original or parent hermitage continued to be crowded as before with aspirants after the religious life [v, 128].