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

V] EDUCATIONAL CENTRES AND INSTITUTIONS 139. AGRAHĀRA VILLAGES AS CENTRES OF LEARNING. What is an Agrahara Village? : On auspicious occasions, kings used to invite learned Brahmanas, settle them in villages and assign their revenues to them for their maintenance. Such villages were called Agrahāra villages, and they naturally became centres of learning where higher education was imparted free in different branches of Sanskrit studies. We shall give here information about two such Agrahāra villages, which were typical of their class. Kadiyur Agrahara : The village of Kādiyur, modern Kalas, in Dharwar district in Karnatak, was made an Agrahāra village in the 10th century by the Rāshtrakūṭa administration, and assigned to 200 Brahmanas, who were well versed in Vedas, grammar, Purāṇas, logic works on polity, the science of literary composition and the art of writing commentaries.¹ The village was famous as an efficient centre of education and its Brahmana residents naturally were proud of its reputation. It may be pointed out that the educational activity of this Brahmana centre was not confined to the Vedic studies only; poetics, grammar, logic, Purāṇas and the political science were included in the curriculum. An endowment had been also received for the salaries of some teachers. A free feeding house was maintained in the village; it was most probably intended for the poor students studying in the local institution. Sarvajnapura Agrahara : Sarvajñapura (modern Arsikere in Hassan District, Mysore) was another Agrahāra village, which, as its name would indicate,

1. E. I., XIII. p. 317.