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

actually sent was much less detailed. In it, he actually—to the extent a collector could—came out with the statement that the degeneration of education ‘is ascribable to the gradual but general impoverishment of the country’; that ‘the means of the manufacturing classes have been greatly diminished by the introduction of our own European manufactures’; that ‘the transfer of the capital of the country from the native government and their officers, who liberally expanded it in India, to Europeans, restricted by law from employing it even temporarily in India, and daily draining it from the land, has likewise tended to this effect’; that ‘in many villages where formerly there were schools, there are now none; and that ‘learning, though it may proudly decline to sell its stores, had never flourished in any country except under the encouragement of the ruling power, and the countenance and support once given to science in this part of India has long been withheld.’ In elaboration, he added that ‘of the 533 institutions for education now existing in this district, I am ashamed to say not one now derives any support from the State’; but that ‘there is no doubt, that in former times, especially under the Hindoo Governments very large grants, both in money and in land, were issued for the support of learning’; that the ‘considerable yeomiahs or grants of money, now paid to brahmins in this district...may, I think, be traced to this source’. He concluded with the observation that: Though it did not consist with the dignity of learning to re- ceive from her votaries hire, it has always in India been deemed the duty of government to evince to her the highest respect, and to grant to her those emoluments which she could not, consistently with her character, receive from other sources; the grants issued by former governments, on such occasions, contained therefore no unbecoming stipulations or conditions. They all purport to flow from the free bounty of the ruling power, merely to aid the maintenance of some holy or learned man, or to secure his prayers for the State. But they were almost universally granted to learned or religious persons, who maintained a school for one or more of the sciences, and taught therein gratuitously; and though not expressed in the deed itself, the duty of continuing such gratuitous instruction was certainly implied in all such grants.⁸⁹ 80