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

82 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch.
professors appointed to the task of regulating admission
by testing the calibre, capacity and sincerity of the appli-
cants for admission¹. Probably similar arrangements
existed also in other institutions of higher education.
Private teachers would themselves test the capacity of
students seeking admission to their schools. At the
beginning of Vedic and professional education, some
religious rituals also were performed, which will be des-
cribed in Appendix I, A.
The Size of the Class: The income of the private
teacher varied with the number of his students, and we
sometimes come across rituals prescribed for getting more
students. But the actual number of students reading
under one teacher does not seem to have been large. The
Jātakas no doubt very often state that the ‘world-renowned’
teachers of Taxila used to have 500 students reading
under them; but this statement seems to be an exaggera-
tion, suggested by the traditional number of disciples usual-
ly associated with the Buddha. For all available evidence
shows that the strength of a class under one teacher was
usually about 15. Nālandā used to have about a thousand
teachers for its student population of not more than nine
thousand. In the 11th century in the Vedic college at
Ennāyiram, each teacher had only about 20 students
under his charge². At Benares during the 17th century,
sometimes only four and usually about 12 to 15 students
used to work under one teacher³. In the 19th century
the number of students under one teacher in Sanskrit

1. These scholars bore the rather curious title of Dvārapālas or
   door-keepers. See Bose, Indian Teachers of Buddist Universities
   pp. 47, 60.
2. S. I. E. R., 1918, p. 145.
3. Bernier, p. 145.