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

the fact that the British society of this period—from the mid- sixteenth to about the later part of the eighteenth century—had few such interests. In matters like religion, philosophy, learning and education, the British were introverted by nature. It is not that Britain had no tradition of education, or scholarship, or philosophy during the 16th, 17th, or early 18th centuries. This period produced figures like Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, etc. It had the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh which had their beginnings in the 13th and 14th centuries A.D. By the later part of the 18th century, Britain also had around 500 Grammar Schools. However, this considerable learning and scholarship were limited to a very select elite. This became especially marked after the mid-sixteenth century, when the Protestant revolution led to the closing of most of the monasteries; while the state sequestered their incomes and properties. Before the Protestant revolution, according to A.E. Dobbs, ‘the University of Oxford might be described as the “chief Charity School of the poor and the chief Grammar School in England, as well as the great place of education for students of theology, of law and medicine”’²; and ‘where instruction was not gratuitous throughout the school, some arrangement was made, by means of a graduated scale of admission fees and quarterages and a system of maintenance to bring the benefits of the institution within the reach of the poorest.’³ Further, while a very early statute of England specified: ‘No one shall put their child apprentice within any city or borough, unless they have land or rent of 20 shillings per annum: but they shall be put to such labour as their fathers or mothers use, or as their estates require;’ it nonetheless also stated that ‘any person may send their children to school to learn literature.’⁴ From about the mid-16th century, however, a contrary trend set in. It even led to the enactment of a law ‘that the English Bible should not be read in churches. The right of private reading was granted to nobles, gentry and merchants that were householders. It was expressly denied to artificers’ prentices, to journeymen and serving men “of the degree of yeomen or under”, to husbandmen and labourers’ so as ‘to allay certain symptoms 8