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

introduction to his Report,—'In short the lowest computation gives us 330,000 pupils (against little more than 190,000 at present) in the schools of the various denominations, who were acquainted with reading, writing and some method of computation; whilst thousands of them belonged to Arabic and Sanskrit colleges, in which oriental literature and systems of Oriental Law, Logic, Philosophy and Medicine, were taught to the highest standards.' I would particularly commend to your attention this classic document of 650 odd pages (folio), the more so as Dr Sir Wm. Hunter, president of the Indian Education Committee, made a special Minute to the Report of that Committee (pp.621-2) in which he found that Dr Leitner's estimate of 120,000 pupils in the Punjab was actually an underestimate by some 15,000, while the official figure supplied by the D.P.I. of the province was below the actual figure by some 80,000 pupils. Incidentally, this will suffice to show how imperfect, inaccurate, undependable, was the official statistical information for these early days, when the people viewed with easily intelligible suspicion enquiries of this nature, and so passively refused to afford the correct information wherever and whenever they could help it. Without minimising in the least degree the value of statistical evidence, I cannot but add that such evidence is worse than useless, when we recall the conditions under which it was compiled, as also the temperament and training of the officials who helped in compiling the same in those primitive times of British rule in India. Let me now speak of Madras, that earliest settlement of British rule in India, and even now said to be the best educated province in the Empire. Sir T. Munro, in a Minute dated 10.3.1826 (Commons Report, 1832, p.506) observes that, taking the male part of the population only, and taking children of between 5-10 years of age only, as school going population, (assumed to be one-ninth of the total population) there were 713,000 male pupils that would be at school. The actual number of pupils in recognised schools was found by him to be 184,110 which works out to be a little over a fourth of the total school- going population. Sir Thomas, however, was of opinion that the actual proportion was nearer one-third than one-fourth, owing to a large number of children receiving instruction privately, and so not included in the above calculation. In Bengal, (Cp. Adam's Report, 1838) the total number of children between 5-14 years of age is taken at 87,629. Of these, 6,786 were returned as receiving instruction in the recognised schools, or 7.7%. This includes both men and women, girls as 376