Sanskrit Learning and Scholastic Institutions

Detailed chapter description

Sanskrit learning is one of the strongest documented strands in the intellectual history of medieval Mithila, but its institutions have often been described with anachronistic vocabulary. This chapter reconstructs the learned world through teachers, pupils, manuscripts, commentaries, courts, debates and mobility. It gives special attention to Gaṅgeśa and Navya-Nyāya while keeping jurisprudence, Mīmāṃsā, grammar and other disciplines in view. It also separates dated evidence from later heritage memory, so that the historical importance of Mithila’s scholastic culture does not depend on calling it a modern-style university. The phrase “scholastic institution” can mislead if it evokes a modern university with a charter, permanent campus, salaried departments and centralized admissions. Sanskrit learning in medieval Mithila was institutionally real, but its durable units were usually different: teacher-households, circles of pupils, manuscript collections, lineages of commentary, courts that rewarded learning, assemblies of experts and reputations that drew students across regions. The historical task is therefore to identify recurring practices and relationships rather than to search for a single building called a university. A text that names a teacher, patron or place; a manuscript copied for study; a sequence of commentaries; and evidence of pupils travelling to a renowned master can together reveal an institution even when no campus archive survives. Conversely, later claims about a continuous “Mithila University” must be tested rather than repeated. This chapter uses “institution” in this distributed sense.