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

224 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch. to the 19th century; some of them, if unfortunately widowed, would devote themselves to learning and even become teachers.¹ Jain widows too were sometimes taught reading and writing by the monks with a view to enable them to read their scriptures.² These were, however, exceptional cases. Society as a whole had become prejudiced against female education. It was believed that a girl taught to read and write aym become a widow soon after her marriage.³ The decline in literacy after the 13th century was so rapid that by the beginning of the 19th century hardly one woman in hundred could read. Such was the state of affairs in Malva and also in Madras presidency. In the latter province in 1826 only 4023 girls were attending schools as against 1,57,664 boys.⁴ According to the then population of the presidency, 16 percent of the boys of the school going age were receiving primary education; the percentage of girls receiving the same was therefore less than one half. In certain sections of Hindu population as among the Nāyars, literacy was much higher, but such groups were few and exceptional. All the available evidence shows that by the beginning of the 19th century, about 99 per cent of women population had grown illiterate.

1. Ward refers to one such case of a Kulina widow, Hati Vidyalamkāra, who removed from Bengal to Benares and obtained some pupils there. A View of Hindus, II p. 508.
2. Malcolm, Memoirs, II, 159.
3. Spark: Vernaculur Education in Bengal, pp. 43-44.
4. Report of the Madras Prov. Committee, p. 5.