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

76 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch.
Buddhist centres of education. Military schools intended
for aristocratic families were naturally housed in spacious
and imposing buildings¹. Temple colleges were usually
located in spacious halls and apartments adjoining the
temples, to which they were attached. As far as private
teachers were concerned, they usually held their classes in
their own houses. This was not difficult for a well-to-do
teacher; for the class usually consisted, as we shall soon
see, of not more than 10 to 15 students. Sanskrit teachers
of even moderate reputation could however usually succeed
in building a small unostentatious building for their
school out of subscriptions collected for the purpose in
their own Tehsil or Taluka. Teachers with small houses
used to repair to an adjoining temple or garden to carry
on their classes. This practice prevailed in Benares
during the medieval times.
Lodging and Boarding Arrangements: Let us now
survey the general features of the lodging and boarding
arrangements made for students. It has been already
shown in Chap. II how the ideal of the Gurukula
required the student to stay under his teacher's roof or
in a boarding house under his direct supervision. Well-
to-do teachers in famous centres of education like Taxila
used to arrange for the lodging and boarding of their
students in their own houses.² It must be remembered in
this connection that the number of students reading under
one teacher was usually not more than 15 and he could
thus arrange for their lodging and boarding. When
public educational institutions came into existence, they
used to invariably arrange for the lodging and boarding of
students in hostels specially built for the purpose. Several

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1 Dialogues of the Buddha, Vol. IV, part iii, p. 111.
2 Jātaka No. 252.