प्राचीन भारत में शिक्षा (डॉ. ए.एस. अल्तेकर - गुरुकुल एवं बौद्ध विहार शिक्षण इतिहास)

56 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch.
Income of the Teacher; Early Period: We have no
data to enable us to get a precise idea of the normal income
of the teacher in the early period. In ancient days in India as
in the West, there was no Education Department prescribing
a scale of salaries, which was more or less followed in
private institutions also. Educational institutions them-
selves came into existence only at about the 5th century
A. D. We have already seen how the educational theory
and practice prohibited the teacher from charging any
fixed scale of fees from his students. The teacher in
ancient India therefore had, as a general rule, no fixed
income. We have seen already that usually he was
also a priest. His income therefore consisted partly of
offerings obtained by him on the occasions of rituals and
sacrifices and partly of voluntary gifts given by his stu-
dents either during or after their course. There was to
be no stipulation for these presents; so they varied with
the financial capacity of the guardians. At Taxila we
learn that the 'world-renowned' teachers used to have 500
students reading under them, and that the rich ones among
the latter used to offer a fee of a thousand coins.¹ This
however does not enable us to get any accurate idea of
the teacher's income. The number of students, 500, is
conventional² and not real and we do not know whether
the fee of 1000 coins offered was for one year or for
the whole course, and whether it included the expenses
of boarding and lodging also, which were normally offered
by the Taxila teacher. We therefore can form no definite
idea of the income of the teacher during the early period.
1 The coins were probably silver Kārshāpaṇas, each weighing
about one third of the modern rupee.
2 Usually each teacher had only about 15 to 20 students read-
ing under him; see Chp. VI.