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

9. House of Commons Papers, 1831-32, Vol.9.
10. Ibid., pp.413-417, 500-507.
11. G.W. Leitner: History of Indigenous Education in the Punjab since Annexation, and in 1882, 1883; (Reprint: Languages Dept., Punjab, Patiala, 1973).
12. See reports of Madras Collectors reproduced in Annexures A(i)-(xxx).
13. Philip Hartog: Some Aspects of Indian Education Past and Present, OUP, 1939. Preface, viii.
14. India Office Library: MSS EUR D 551, Hartog to Mahatma Gandhi 21.10.1931.
15. Hartog: op. cit.
16. Hansard: June 22 and July 1, 1813.
17. V.A. Smith: Akbar: The Great Mogul, Clarendon Press, 1917, p.394.
18. London: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1917, pp.815-825.
19. Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts, Other India Press, Goa, 2000.
20. Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition: With some Early Nineteenth Century Documents, Other India Press, Goa, 2000.

7

Introduction Indian historical knowledge, by and large, has been derived, at least until recent decades, from the writings and accounts left by foreigners. This applies equally to our knowledge about the status of Indian education over the past five centuries. The universities of Taxila and Nalanda, and a few others until recently have been better known and written about primarily because they had been described centuries ago by some Greek or Chinese traveller, who happened to keep a journal which had survived, or had communicated such information to his compatriots who passed it down to our times. Travellers and adventurers of a new kind began to wander around parts of India from about 1500 A.D., and more so from about the close of the 16th century. Since for centuries the areas they came from had had no direct links with India, and as they had come from wholly different climates and societies, to them most aspects of India—its manners, religions, philosophies, ancient and contemporary architecture, wealth, learning, and even its educational methods—were something quite different from their own backgrounds, assumptions and experience. Prior to 1770, (by which time they had become actual rulers of large areas), the British, on whose writings and reports this book is primarily based,¹ had rather a different set of interests. These interests, as in the subsequent period too, were largely mercantile, technological, or were concerned with comprehending, and evaluating Indian statecraft; and, thereby, extending their influence and dominion in India. Indian religions, philosophies, scholarship and the extent of education—notwithstanding what a few of them may have written on the Parsis, or the Banias of Surat—had scarcely interested them until then. Such a lack of interest was due partly to their different expectations from India. The main reason for this, however, lay in 7

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

of disorder occasioned by a free use of the Scriptures.’⁵ According to this new trend, it was ‘meet for the ploughman’s son to go to the plough, and the artificer’s son to apply the trade of his parent’s vocation: and the gentlemen’s children are meet to have the knowledge of Government and rule in the commonwealth. For we have as much need of ploughmen as any other State: and all sorts of men may not go to school.’⁶ A century and a half later (that is, from about the end of the 17th century), there is a slow reversal of the above trend, leading to the setting up of some Charity Schools for the common people. These schools are mainly conceived to provide ‘some leverage in the way of general education to raise the labouring class to the level of religious instruction’; and, more so in Wales, ‘with the object of preparing the poor by reading and Bible study for the Sunday worship and catechetical instruction.’⁷ After a short start, however, the Charity School movement became rather dormant. Around 1780, it was succeeded by the Sunday school movement.⁸ ‘Popular education’, even at this period, ‘was still approached as a missionary enterprise.’ The maxim was ‘that every child should learn to read the Bible.’⁹ The hope of securing a decent observance of Sunday’¹⁰ led to a concentrated effort on the promotion of Sunday schools. After some years, this attention focussed on the necessity of day schools. From then on, school education grew apace. Nevertheless, even 9

as late as 1834, ‘the curriculum in the better class of national schools was limited in the main to religious instruction, reading, writing and arithmetic: in some country schools writing was excluded for fear of evil consequences.’¹¹ The major impetus to the Day school movement came from what was termed the ‘Peel’s Act of 1802’. This Act required the employer of young children ‘to provide, during the first four years of the seven years of apprenticeship, competent instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic, and to secure the presence of his apprentice at religious teaching for one hour every Sunday and attendance at a place of worship on that day.’¹² ‘But the Act was unpopular’, and its ‘practical effect...was not great.’¹³ At about the same time, however, the monitorial method of teaching used by Joseph Lancaster (and also by Andrew Bell, supposedly borrowed from India)¹⁴ came into practice and greatly helped advance the cause of popular education. The number of those attending school was estimated at around 40,000 in 1792, at 6,74,883 in 1818, and 21,44,377 in 1851. The total number of schools, public as well as private in 1801 was stated to be 3,363. By stages, it reached a total of 46,114 in 1851.¹⁵ In the beginning, ‘the teachers were seldom competent’, and ‘Lancaster insinuates that the men were not only ignorant but drunken.’¹⁶ As regards the number of years of schooling, Dobbs writes that ‘allowing for irregularity of attendance, the average length of school life rises on a favourable estimate from about one year in 1835 to about two years in 1851.’¹⁷ The fortunes of English Public schools are said to have fallen strikingly during the eighteenth century. In January 1797, the famous school at Shrewsbury, for instance, did not have ‘above three or four boys.’ After some major reorganisation, it had about 20 pupils a year later.¹⁸ In public schools like Eton, teaching consisted of writing and arithmetic (a number of English and 10

Latin books were studied); while those in the fifth form also learnt ancient Geography, or Algebra. Those who stayed at Eton long enough’ also ‘went through part of Euclid.’¹⁹ However it was ‘not till 1851 that Mathematics became a part of the regular school work and even at that date those who taught the subject were not regarded as persons of full standing on the staff of masters.’²⁰ School education, especially elementary education at the people’s level, remained an uncommon commodity till around 1800. Nonetheless, the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh were perhaps as important for Britain as Taxila and Nalanda were in ancient India; or places like Navadweep were as late as the later part of the 18th century.²¹ Since many of those who began to come to India from Britain especially after 1773 as travellers, scholars, or judges had had their education in one of these three universities,²² it may be relevant to provide here a brief account of the courses studied together with the number of students, in one of these universities around 1800. The university chosen here is that of Oxford, and it is assumed that this information is also fairly representative of studies at Cambridge and Edinburgh at this period. The growth of the University of Oxford (following England’s rupture with Rome) may be indicated with the following chronological list of professorships created there from 1546 onwards:²³ 1546 5 Professorships founded by Henry VIII:

1. Divinity, 2. Civil Law, 3. Medicine, 4. Hebrew,
2. Greek 1619 Geometry, and Astronomy 11

1621 Natural Philosophy 1621 Moral Philosophy (but break between 1707- 1829) 1622 Ancient History (i.e. Hebrew, and Europe) 1624 Grammar, Rhetoric, Metaphysics (fell into disuse, replaced by Logic in 1839) 1624 Anatomy 1626 Music 1636 Arabic 1669 Botany 1708 Poetry 1724 Modern History and Modern Languages 1749 Experimental Philosophy 1758 Common Law 1780 Clinical Instruction 1795 Anglo-Saxon (i.e. language, literature, etc.) 1803 Chemistry In the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were nineteen colleges and five halls in Oxford. There were about 500 fellows in the colleges, a few of whom were engaged in teaching in each college. In addition, there were nineteen professors in 1800. This total had increased to 25 by 1854. Theology and classics were the main subjects which were studied at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Examinations were set in classics known as Literae Humaniores. These included Greek and Latin language and literature, moral philosophy, rhetoric and logic, and the elements of the mathematical sciences and physics. Lectures were also available on other topics, e.g. law, medicine and geology. After 1805, there was an increase in the number of students entering the University. The number of students on the rolls rose from about 760 in the early nineteenth century to about 1300 in 1820-24. The main sources of financial support of the colleges in Oxford were their endowments, mainly in land, and income from students. The proportion of income from each source varied from 12

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

II This great accumulation of material, from about the mid-18th century, led to serious scholarly attention and debate on India, and areas of South East Asia, particularly with regard to their politics, laws, philosophies and sciences, especially Indian astronomy. This contemporary European interest, (especially amongst men like Voltaire, Abbe Raynal and Jean Sylvain Bailly) aroused a similar interest in Britain. This was more so amongst those connected with the University of Edinburgh, like Adam Ferguson, William Robertson, John Playfair²⁶ and A. Maco- nochie. In 1775, Adam Ferguson recommended to his former student, John Macpherson (temporarily to be Governor General of Bengal during 1784-85) ‘to collect the fullest details you can of every circumstance relating to the state and operation of policy in India...That you may the better apprehend what I mean by the detail...select some town and its district. Procure if possible an account of its extent and number of people. The different classes of that people, the occupations, the resources, the way of life of each. How they are related and their mutual dependencies. What contributions Government, or subordinate masters draw from the labourer of any denomination and how it is drawn. But I beg pardon for saying so much of an object which you must know so much better than I do. The man who can bring light from India (i.e. of its material resources, etc.) into this country and who has address to make his light be followed may in a few years hence make himself of great consequence and here I shall conclude my letter...’²⁷ A. Maconochie advocated, on the other hand (first in 1783²⁸ and then again in 1788), the taking of such measures by ‘our monarch, the sovereign of the banks of the Ganges...as may be necessary for discovering, collecting and translating whatever is extent of the ancient works of the Hindoos.’ He thought that if the British ‘procured these works to Europe, astronomy and 14

antiquities, and the sciences connected with them would be advanced in a still great proportion.’ He observed further that ‘the antiquities of the religion and Government of the Hindoos are not less interesting than those of their sciences’; and felt that ‘the history, the poems, the traditions, the very fables of the Hindoos might therefore throw light upon the history of the ancient world and in particular upon the institutions of that celebrated people from whom Moses received his learning and Greece her religion and her arts.’ Prof. Maconochie also stated that the centre of most of this learning was Benares, where ‘all the sciences are still taught’ and where ‘very ancient works in astronomy are still extant.’²⁹ Around the same time, a similar vein of thought and some corresponding action had started amongst those who had been entrusted with the exercise of political power and the carrying out of the policies and instructions from London, within India. The more practical and immediate purposes of governance (following Adam Ferguson) led to the writing of works on Hindu and Muslim law, investigations into the rights of property and the revenues of various areas, and to assist all this, to a cultivation of Sanskrit and Persian amongst some of the British themselves. Acquaintance with these languages was felt necessary so as to enable the British to discover better, or to discard, choose, or select what suited their purpose most. In the process some of them also developed a personal interest in Sanskrit and other Indian literature for its own sake, or for the sort of reasons which Prof. Maconochie had in view. Charles Wilkins, William Jones, F.W. Ellis in Madras, and Lt Wilford (the latter got engaged in some very exotic research at Varanasi) were amongst the more well known men of this category. Three approaches (seemingly different but in reality complementary to one another) began to operate in the British held areas of India regarding Indian knowledge, scholarship and centres of learning from about the 1770s. The first resulted from growing British power and administrative requirements which (in addition to such undertakings that men like Adam Ferguson had recommended) also needed to provide a garb of legitimacy and a background of previous indigenous precedents (however 15

farfetched) to the new concepts, laws and procedures which were being created by the British state. It is primarily this requirement which gave birth to British Indology. The second approach was a product of the mind of the Edinburgh enlightenment (dating back to around 1750) which men like Maconochie represented. They had a fear, born out of historical experience, philosophical observation and reflection (the uprooting of entire civilizations in the Americas), that the conquest and defeat of a civilisation generally led not only to its disintegration, but the disappearance of precious knowledge associated with it. They advocated, therefore, the preparation of a written record of what existed, and what could be got from the learned in places like Varanasi. The third approach was a projection of what was then being attempted in Great Britain itself: to bring people to an institutionalised, formal, law-abiding Christianity and, for that some literacy and teaching became essential. To achieve such a purpose in India, and to assist evangelical exhortation and propaganda for extending Christian ‘light’ and ‘knowledge’ to the people, preparation of the grammars of various Indian languages became urgent. The task according to William Wilberforce, called for ‘the circulation of the holy scriptures in the native languages’ with a view to the general diffusion of Christianity, so that the Indians ‘would, in short become Christians, if I may so express myself, without knowing it.’30 All these efforts, joined together, also led to the founding of a few British sponsored Sanskrit and Persian colleges as well as to the publication of some Indian texts or selections from them which suited the purpose of governance. From now on, Christian missionaries also began to open schools. Occasionally, they wrote about the state and extent of indigenous education in the parts of India in which they functioned. However, British interest was not centered on the people, their knowledge, or education, or the lack of it. Rather, their interest in ancient texts served their purpose: that of making the people conform to what was chosen for them from such texts and their new interpretations. Their other interest (till 1813, this was only amongst a section of the British) was in the christianisation of those who were considered ready for such conversions (or, in the British phraseology of the period, for receiving ‘the blessings of Christian light and moral improvements’). These conversions were also expected to serve a more political purpose, in as much as it was felt that it could establish some affinity of outlook and belief 16

between the rulers and the ruled. A primary consideration in all British decisions from the very beginning, continued to be the aim of maximising the revenue receipts of Government and of discovering any possible new source which had remained exempt from paying any revenue to Government. III Instructions regarding the collection of information about the extent and nature of indigenous Indian education (including its contemporary state) were largely the consequence of the long debate in the House of Commons in 1813. This debate focussed on the clause relating to the promotion of ‘religious and moral improvement’ in India.³¹ Before any new policy could be devised, the existing position needed to be better known. But the quality and coverage of these surveys varied from Presidency to Presidency, and even from district to district. (This generally happens in the gathering of any such information, and more so when such collection of data was a fairly new thing.) The information which is thus available today, whether published, or still in manuscript form in the government records—as is true of the details of the Madras Presidency indigenous education survey—largely belongs to the 1820’s and 1830’s period. An unofficial survey made by G.W. Leitner in 1882 for the Punjab compared the situation there for the years before 1850, with that in 1882. Before highlighting the main points of information given by the surveys and then proceeding with its analysis, some preliminary observations about the data as a whole are in order. The first observation concerns the largely quantitative nature of the data presented and the fact that it concentrates largely on the institution of the school as we know it today. This, however, may help propagate wrong impressions. It is important to emphasize that indigenous education was carried out through pathshalas, madrassahs and gurukulas. Education in these traditional institutions—which were actually kept alive by revenue contributions by the community including 17

illiterate peasants—was called shiksha (and included the ideas of prajna, shil and samadhi). These institutions were, in fact, the watering holes of the culture of traditional communities. Therefore, the term ‘school’ is a weak translation of the roles these institutions really played in Indian society. For this reason, the quantitative nature of the data presented should be read with great caution. The increase in the numbers of schools in England may not necessarily have been a good thing, as it merely signified the arrival of factory schooling. On the other hand, the decline in the numbers of traditional educational institutions is to be intensely deplored, since this meant quality education was being replaced by a substandard substitute. These aspects must always be kept at the back of our minds when we commence analysing the data for significance. Before we do that, the highlights first. The most well-known and controversial point which emerged from the educational surveys lies in an observation made by William Adam. In his first report, he observed that there exist about 1,00,000 village schools in Bengal and Bihar around the 1830s.³² This statement appears to have been founded on the impressions of various high British officials and others who had known the different areas rather intimately and over long periods; it had no known backing of official records. Similar statements had been made, much before W. Adam, for areas of the Madras Presidency. Men like Thomas Munro, had observed that ‘every village had a school.’³³ For areas of the newly extended Presidency of Bombay around 1820, senior officials like G.L. Prendergast noted ‘that there is hardly a village, great or small, throughout our territories, in which there is not at least one school, and in larger villages more.’³⁴ Observations made by Dr G.W. Leitner in 1882 show that the spread of education in the Punjab around 1850 was of a similar extent. 18

Since these observations were made, they have been treated very differently: by some, with the sanctity reserved for divine utterances; and by others, as blasphemous. Naturally, the first view was linked with the growth of a vocal Indian nationalism. Its exponents, besides prominent Indians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, have also included many illustrious Englishmen, like Keir Hardie, and academics like Max Mueller. The second, the blasphemous view of them, was obviously held by those who were in the later period, in one capacity or another, concerned with the administration of India; or those who felt impelled, sometimes because of their commitment to certain theoretical formulations on the development of societies, to treat all such impressions as unreal. Especially after 1860, it had become necessary to ensure that men who had had a long period of service in the British Indian administration or its ancillary branches and who also had the ability to write, should engage in the defence of British rule, especially its beginnings, and consequently attempt to refute any statements which implied that the British had damaged India in any significant manner. While much ink has been spilt on such a controversy, little attempt is known to have been made for placing these state- ments or observations in their contextual perspective. Leaving Leitner’s work, most of these statements belong to the early decades of the nineteenth century. For the later British administrator, the difficulty of appreciating the substance of the controversy is quite understandable. For England had few schools for the children of ordinary people till about 1800. Even many of the older Grammar Schools were in poor shape at the time. Moreover, the men who wrote about India (whether concerning its education, or its industry and crafts, or the somewhat higher real wages of Indian agricultural labourers compared to such wages in England)³⁵ belonged to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century society of Great Britain. Naturally, when they wrote about a school in every village in India—whether that may or may not have been literally true—in contrast to the British situation, it must have appeared to them so. And though they did not much mention this contrast in so many words, it may reasonably be assumed that, as perceptive observers, it was the very contrast which led them to make such judgements. These surveys, based not on mere impressions but on hard data, reveal a great deal: the nature of Indian education; its 19

content; the duration for which it ordinarily lasted; the numbers actually receiving institutional education in particular areas; and, most importantly, detailed information on the background of those benefiting from these institutions. The idea of a school existing in every village, dramatic and picturesque in itself, attracted great notice and eclipsed the equally important details. The more detailed and hard facts have received hardly any notice or analysis. This is both natural and unfortunate. For these latter facts provide an insight into the nature of Indian society at that time. Deeper analysis of this data and adequate reflection on the results followed by required further research may help solve even the riddle of what has been termed ‘the legend of the 1,00,000 schools’.³⁶ According to this hard data, in terms of the content, the and proportion of those attending institutional school education, the situation in India in 1800 is certainly not inferior to what obtained in England then; and in many respects Indian schooling seems to have been much more extensive (and, it should be remembered, that it is a greatly damaged and disorganised India that one is referring to). The content of studies was better than what was then studied in England. The duration of study was more prolonged. The method of school teaching was superior and it is this very method which is said to have greatly helped the introduction of popular education in England but which had prevailed in India for centuries. School attendance, especially in the districts of the Madras Presidency, even in the decayed state of the period 1822-25, was proportionately far higher than the numbers in all variety of schools in England in 1800. The conditions under which teaching took place in the Indian schools were less dingy and more natural;³⁷ and, it was observed, the teachers in the Indian schools were generally more dedicated and sober than in the English versions. The only aspect, and certainly a very important one, where Indian institutional education seems to have lagged behind was with regard to the education of girls. Quite possibly, girl schooling may have been proportionately more extensive in England in 1800, and was definitely the case, a few decades later. Accounts of education in India do often state (though it is difficult to judge their substantive accuracy from the data which is so far known), that 20

the absence of girls in schools was explained, however, by the fact that most of their education took place in the home. It is, however, the Madras Presidency and Bengal-Bihar data which presents a kind of revelation. The data reveals the background of the teachers and the taught. It presents a picture which is in sharp contrast to the various scholarly pronounce- ments of the past 100 years or more, in which it had been assumed that education of any sort in India, till very recent decades, was mostly limited to the twice-born³⁸ amongst the Hindoos, and amongst the Muslims to those from the ruling elite. The actual situation which is revealed was different, if not quite contrary, for at least amongst the Hindoos, in the districts of the Madras Presidency (and dramatically so in the Tamil- speaking areas) as well as the two districts of Bihar. It was the groups termed Soodras, and the castes considered below them³⁹ who predominated in the thousands of the then still-existing schools in practically each of these areas. The last issue concerns the conditions and arrangements which alone could have made such a vast system of education feasible: the sophisticated operative fiscal arrangements of the pre-British Indian polity. Through these fiscal measures, substantial proportions of revenue had long been assigned for the performance of a multiplicity of public purposes. These seem to have stayed more or less intact through all the previous political turmoils and made such education possible. The collapse of this arrangement through a total centralisation of revenue, as well as politics led to decay in the economy, social life, education, etc. This inference, if at all valid, warrants a re- examination of the various currently held intellectual and political assumptions with regard to the nature of pre-British Indian society, and its political and state structure. Before discussing this last issue any further, however, it is necessary first to understand the various aspects of the educa- tional data, and the controversy it gave rise to in the 1930s. Since the detailed data of the Madras Presidency is the least known and the most comprehensive, we shall examine it first. 21

IV The available papers connected with this survey include the instructions of Government, the circular from the Board of Reve- nue to the district collectors conveying the instructions and the prescribed form according to which information had to be com- piled, the replies of the collectors from all the 21 districts of the Presidency, the proceedings of the Board of Revenue on the information received while submitting it to Government, and the Madras Government’s proceedings on it. These are all reproduced as Annexure A (i)-(xxx). It would have been useful for a more thorough analysis, and for better understanding of the situation if the details from which the collectors compiled their reports could be found. A reference to the records of a few districts, preserved in the Tamilnadu State Archives does not, however, indicate any additional material having survived in them. If any Taluka records still exist for this period it is quite possible they may contain more detailed data about particular villages, towns, colleges and schools. In addition to the instructions conveyed in the Minute of the Governor-in-Council, and the text of the letter from Government to the Board of Revenue (both of which were sent to the collectors), the prescribed form required from them details of the number of schools and colleges in the districts, and the number of male and female scholars in them. The number of scholars, male as well as female were further to be provided under the following categories: (i) Brahmin scholars, (ii) Vysee scholars, (iii) Soodra scholars, (iv) scholars of all other castes and (v) Mussalman scholars. The numbers under (i) to (iv) were to be totalled separately. To these were added those under (v), thus arriving at the total number of Hindoo and Mussalman scholars, in the district, or some part of it. The category ‘all other castes’, as mentioned earlier, evidently seems to have implied all such castes considered somewhat below the Sat-Soodra category. This included most such groupings which today are listed among the scheduled castes. It may be noted from the documents that while a reply was received from the collector of Canara, he did not send any data about the number of schools, and colleges, or any estimation of the number of those who may have been receiving instruction in the district, through what he termed private education. Apart from the statement that ‘there are no colleges in Canara’, etc., 22

he was of the view that teaching in Canara could not be termed ‘public education’; as it was organised on a somewhat discontinuous basis by a number of parents in an area by getting together and engaging the services of a teacher(s) for the purpose of teaching their children. The major difficulty for the collector, however, seemed to be that ‘the preparation of the necessary information would take up a considerable time’; and, that even if it were collected, no ‘just criterion of the actual extent of schools as exist in this zillah could be formed upon it.’ He hoped, therefore, that his letter itself would be considered as a satisfactory reply. It may be added here that Canara (from about 1800 onwards, and till at least the 1850s), even more than the northern areas of coastal Andhra, was the scene of continual opposition and peasant resistance to British rule. Besides, it also generally happened that whenever any such data was ordered to be collected (and this happened quite often) on one topic or another, the quality and extent of the information supplied by the collectors varied a great deal. To some extent, such differ- ences in these returns arose from the varying relevance of an enquiry from district to district. A more important reason, per- haps, was the fact that because of the frequent change of collec- tors and their European assistants, many of them (at the time such information was required) were not very familiar with the district under their charge. Furthermore, quite a number were for various reasons, too involved in other more pressing activities, or, mentally much less equipped to meet such continual demands for information. The information from the districts, therefore, varies a great deal in detail as well as quality. While the data from about half the districts was organised taluka-wise, and in some even parga- na-wise, from the other half it was received for the district as a whole. Three districts—Vizagapatam, Masulipatam and Tanjore—added one further category to the prescribed form provided by Government, viz. the category of Chettris or Rajah scholars between the columns for Brahmin and Vysee scholars. Further, while some of the collectors especially of Bellary, Cuddapah, Guntoor and Rajahmundry sent fairly detailed textual replies, some others like Tinnevelly, Vizagapatam and Tanjore left it to the data to tell the story. A few of the collectors also mentioned the books used in the schools and institutions of higher learning in their districts. The collector of Rajahmundry, being the most detailed, provided a list of 43 books used in Telugu schools. He also identified some of those used in the schools of higher learning, as well as in the schools teaching Persian and Arabic.

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