description, consisting of huts with raised earthen floors, the whole of which may have cost from ten to sixty rupees.
In those instances—and they are not few—in which the teachers are too poor to erect separate apartments, they are constrained to give their instructions within their own dwellings. In these also the stranger students are lodged and fed, and pursue their studies, whether by night or by day.
Since, then, instruction is given gratuitously nearly to all, and food and lodging in addition, to so large a proportion, it may naturally be asked, whence do the teachers acquire the means of accomplishing all this? As the inquiry is fraught with interest, inasmuch as it tends to throw much light on the whole internal economy of learned or scholastic Hinduism, we shall quote Mr. Adam’s full and lucid statement on the subject:—
“The custom of inviting learned men on the occasion of funeral obsequies, marriages, festivals, &c., and at such times of bestowing gifts on them proportioned in value and amount to the estimation in which they are held as teachers, is general amongst those Hindus who are of sufficiently pure caste to be considered worthy of the association of Brahmans. The presents bestowed consist of two parts—first, articles of consumption, principally various sorts of food; and, second, gifts of money. In the distribution of the latter, at the conclusion of the celebration, a distinction is made between sabdikas, philologers, or teachers of general literature—smarttas, teachers of law—and naiyayikas, teachers of logic,—of whom the first class ranks lowest, the second next, and the third highest. The value of the gifts bestowed rises not merely with the acquirements of the individual in his own department of learning, but with the dignity of the department to which he has devoted his chief labours, and in which he is most distinguished. It does not, however, follow that the professors of the most highly honoured branch of learning are always on the whole the most highly rewarded; for in Rajshahi, logic, which, by the admission of all, ranks highest, from whatever cause, is not extensively cultivated, and has few professors, and these receive a small number of invitations, and consequently of gifts, in proportion to the limited number of their pupils, and the practical disuse of the study. Their total receipts, therefore, are not superior, and even not equal to the emoluments enjoyed by learned men of an inferior grade, who have moreover a source of profit in the performance of ceremonial recitations on public occasions, which the pride or self-respect of the logicians will not permit them to undertake. Whatever the amount, it is from the income thus obtained[1] that the teachers of the different classes and grades are enabled to build school-houses, and to provide food and lodging for their scholars: but several have assured me that, to meet these expenses, they have often incurred debt, from which they are relieved only by the occasional and unexpected liberality of individual benefactors. “When a teacher of learning receives such an invitation as is above described, he generally takes one or two of his pupils with him, giving each pupil his turn of such an advantage in due course; and when the master of the
- ↑ Besides the principal sources of income now indicated, there are individual cases in which the teachers mainly depend on the liberality of a patron, on the proceeds of an endowment, on the emoluments derived from the practice of divination, on village subscriptions, on the wages derived from officiating as family priests, or initiating priests, or reciters of the Purans, &c.
