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

college to college. Taking a wider view of all the expenses of a university course (including clothing and travelling), a parent who clothed his son and supported him at university as well as during the vacation could expect to pay from £600-800 for his four year course around 1850.²⁴ While the British, as well as the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the French, directly or in the name of the various East India Companies they had set up in the late 16th and early 17th centuries were busy extending their bases, factories, fortifications and the like, and wherever possible occupying whole territories in the Indian Ocean area, European scholars on their part were trying to understand various aspects of the civilizations existing in this area. Prominent amongst these were members of several Christian monastic orders, the most well known being the Jesuits, who were specialising in the fields of the sciences, customs, manners, philosophies and religions. There were some others with interests of a more political, his- torical or economic nature. Many of them took to narrating their own adventures, and occasionally, misfortunes in the ‘fabulous’ and ‘exotic’ East. Due to the widespread interest of the European elite, much of this writing was published in one or more European languages soon after. Accounts and discussions which happened to be of a limited, but great scholarly or religious interest, were copied by hand many times over.²⁵ 13