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

They had really begun to believe in their ‘divinely ordained’ mission in India, and other conquered areas.⁶³ At any rate, Leitner’s researches showed that at the time of the annexation of the Panjab, the lowest computation gave ‘3,30,000 pupils in the schools of the various denominations who were acquainted with reading, writing and some method of computation.’ This is in contrast with ‘little more than 1,90,000’ pupils in 1882. Furthermore, 35-40 years previously, ‘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.’ Leitner went into great detail, district by district, basing himself on earlier official writings; and, then carried out a detailed survey of his own regarding the position in 1882. A few brief extracts from this work, pertaining to his general statement, the type of schools which had existed earlier, and the list of books used in the Sanskritic schools is included amongst the documents reproduced in this work (Annexure E). In the documents reproduced in this work, or in those others of the eighteenth, or early nineteenth century on the subject of education in India, while there is much on the question of higher learning, especially of Theology, Law, Medicine, Astronomy, and Astrology, there is scarcely any reference to the teaching and training in the scores of technologies, and crafts which had then existed in India. There is also little mention of training in Music, and Dance. These latter two, it may be presumed, were largely taken care of by the complex temple organisations. The major cause of the lack of reference about the former, however, is obviously because those who wrote on education— whether as government administrators, travellers, Christian missionaries, or scholars—were themselves uninterested in how such crafts were taught, or passed from one generation to 57