द ब्यूटीफुल ट्री: १८वीं सदी में भारत की स्वदेशी गुरुकुल शिक्षा (धर्मपाल)

and quotes extensively from various British authorities. These span almost a century: from the Dispatch from England of 3rd June 1814 to the Governor General in India, to the observations of Max Mueller; and the 1909 remarks of the British labour leader, Keir Hardie. However, given the period in which the book was written and the inaccessibility of the detailed manuscript records, it was inevitable that the author had to base his work entirely on existing printed sources. Nevertheless, as an introduction, this chapter of Bharat men Angreji Raj is a landmark on the subject of indigenous Indian education in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Very little, however, has been written on the history, or state of education during this period, starting with the thirteenth century and up until the early nineteenth century. Undoubtedly, there are a few works like that of S.M. Jaffar⁶ pertaining to Muslim education. There are a chapter or two, or some cursory references in most educational histories pertaining to the period of British rule, and to the decayed state of indigenous Indian education in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Nurullah and Naik’s book⁷ devotes the first 43 pages (out of 643 pages) to discussing the state of indigenous education in the early nineteenth century, and in challenging certain later British views about the nature and extent of it. Most of the discussion on the state of indigenous Indian education in the early nineteenth century, and the differing view- points which give rise to it, use as their source material (a) the much talked about reports by William Adam, a former Christian missionary, on indigenous education in some of the districts of Bengal and Bihar 1835-8,⁸ (b) published extracts of a survey made by the British authorities regarding indigenous education in the Bombay Presidency during the 1820s,⁹ and (c) published extracts from another wider survey of indigenous education made 2