The world's first university was established at Takshasila or
Taxila (northwest region of India) in approximately 700 B.C. The Universities
in ancient India were entirely residential. It was considered that a University
should contain at least 21 Professors well versed in Philosophy, Theology and
Law; pupils were given free tuition, free boarding, and students who went to an
educational institution - be the king or a peasant - lived and boarded together.
Ashramas, Viharas and Parishads were great centers of culture and attracted
large numbers.
Students went there
to learn the purest Sanskrit. Kautilya,
whose Arthashashtra is the classic Indian treatise on statecraft, is said to
have been born there in the third century BC. It was also in Taxila that, in
the previous century, Panini compiled a grammar more comprehensive and
scientific than any dreamed of by Greek grammarians.
The campus
accommodated 10,500 students and offered over sixty different courses in
various fields, such as science, mathematics, medicine, politics, warfare,
astrology, astronomy, music, religion, and philosophy. The minimum age for
admission was 16 years and students from as far as Babylonia, Greece, Syria,
Arabia, and China came to study at the university. Taxila, stood on the banks
of the river Vitasa in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent.
A wide range of
subjects were taught by experienced masters: Vedas, Language, Grammar,
Philosophy, Medicine, Surgery, Archery, Politics, Warfare, Astronomy,
Astrology, Accounts, Commerce, Futurology, Documentation, Occult, Music, Dance,
etc.
Panini, the great
Sanskrit grammarian, Charaka, the author of famous treatise on medicine, and
Chanakya, writer of Artha Shastra -- these august names are associated with
Taxila. Promising minds from far flung regions converged there to study the
Vedas and all branches of secular knowledge. Takshasila or Taxila, as the
Greeks called it over 2,000 years ago, was at one of the entrances to the
splendor that was India. Its antiquity is rooted both in epic texts like the
Ramayana, Mahabharata and the other Puranas.
The Jakatas are
full of references to Taxila - over 100 in fact. Mention is made of
world-renowned professors who taught the Vedas, the Kalas, Shilpa, Archery and
so on. King Kosala and Jivaka, the famous physician were students of the
University, the latter learning medicine under Rishi Atreya. Great stress was
laid on the study of Sanskrit and Pali literature.
When the Chinese
traveller Huen T’sang (A.D. 603-64) visited Takshashila, the town had lost all
its former grandeur and international character. (6260).
