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

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XVIII COLLECTOR, TRICHINOPOLY TO BOARD OF REVENUE: 23.8.1823 (TNSA: BRP: Vol.959 Pro.28.8.1823 pp.7456-57 Nos.35-36)

1. Information having at length been obtained on the subject of your letter of the 25th July 1822, I do myself the honor to submit the result. The annexed statement drawn up in correspondence with that which accompanied your letter, will show the number of native schools and colleges in this district, and the number of scholars male as well as female Hindoos of all castes, and Mussulmans, who are educated in them.
2. The scholars generally continue in the schools from the age of 7 to 15 and the average yearly expense of education is about 7 pagodas. There are no schools or colleges in this district for the support of which my public funds are appropriated, and in institutions for teaching Astronomy—Theology or any other science.
3. In the talook of Jyalore alone, and no other, there are 7 schools, which were formerly endowed by some Native Government with between 44 and 47 Cawnies of land for the maintenance of the teachers. Trichinopoly, G.W. Saunders, 23rd August, 1823. Collector. (Statement on following page) 184

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XIX COLLECTOR, BELLARY TO BOARD OF REVENUE: 17.8.1823 (TNSA: BRP: Vol.958 Pro.25.8.1823 pp.7167-85 Nos.32-33)

1. The delay of my Amildars, in furnishing the requisite returns, has hitherto prevented my submitting to you the enclosed statement called for in your orders of the 25th July 1822, and 19th of June last.
2. The population of this District is specified in the enclosed statement at 9,27,857 or little less than a million of souls. The number of schools is only 533 containing no more than, 6,641 scholars, or about twelve to each school, and not seven individuals in a thousand, of the entire population.
3. The Hindoo scholars are in number 6,398, the Mussulman scholars only 243, and the whole of these are males, with the exception of only sixty girls, who are all Hindoos exclusively.
4. The English language is taught in one school only. The Tamil in four, the Persian in twenty-one, the Mahratta in twenty- three, the Teloogoo in two hundred and twenty-six, and the Carnataca in two hundred and thirty-five. Besides these, there are twenty-three places of instruction, attended by Bramins exclusively, in which some of the Hindoo sciences, such as Theology, Astronomy, Logic and Law, are still imperfectly taught in the Sanscrit Language.
5. In these places of Sanscrit instruction in the Hindoo sciences, attended by youths, and often by persons far advanced in life, education is conducted on a plan entirely different from that pursued in the schools, in which children are taught read- ing, writing, and arithmetic only, in the several vernacular dialects of the country. I shall endeavour to give a brief outline of the latter, as to them the general population of the country is confined, and as that population consists chiefly of Hindoos, I shall not dwell on the few Mussulman schools in which Persian is taught. 186

6. The education of the Hindoo youth generally commences when they are five years old. On reaching this age, the master and scholars of the school to which the boy is to be sent, are invited to the house of his parents. The whole are seated in a circle round an image of Gunasee, and the child to be initiated is placed exactly opposite to it. The school master, sitting by his side, after having burnt incense and presented offerings, causes the child to repeat a prayer to Gunasee entreating wisdom. He then guides the child to write with its finger in rice the mystic name of the deity, and is dismissed with a present from the parents, according to their ability. The child, next morning commences the great work of his education.
7. Some children continue at school only five years, the parents, through poverty, or other circumstances, being often obliged to take them away, and consequently, in such cases, the merest smattering of an education is obtained; and when parents take a lively interest in the culture of their children's minds, they not infrequently continue at school as long as fourteen and fifteen years.
8. The internal routine of duty for each day will be found, with very few exceptions, and little variation, the same in schools. The hour generally for opening school is six o'clock. The first child who enters has the name of Saraswatee, or the Goddess of learning, written upon the palm of his hand, as a sign of honor, and, on the hand of the second, a cypher is written, to show that he is worthy, neither of praise nor censure, the third scholar receives a gentle stripe; the fourth two, and every succeeding scholar that comes an additional one. This custom as well as the punishments in native schools, seem of a severe kind. The idle scholar is flogged, and often suspended by both hands, and a pulley, to the roof, or obliged to kneel down and rise incessantly, which is most painful and fatiguing but perhaps a healthy mode of punishment.
9. When the whole are assembled, the scholars according to their number and attainments, are divided into several classes. The lower ones of which are placed partly under the care of monitors, whilst the higher ones are more immediately under the superintendence of the master, who at the same time has his eye upon the whole school. The number of classes is generally four; and a scholar rises from one to the other, according to his capacity and progress. The first business of a child on entering 187

school is to obtain a knowledge of the letters, which he learns by writing them with his finger on the ground in sand, and not by pronouncing the alphabet as among European nations. When he becomes pretty dexterous in writing with his finger in sand, he has then the privilege of writing either with an iron style on cadjan leaves, or with a reed on paper, and sometimes on the leaves of the aristolochia identica, or with a kind of pencil on the Hulligi or Kadata, which answer the purpose of slates. The two latter in these districts are the most common. One of these is a common oblong board about a foot in width and three feet in length. This board, when plained smooth, has only to be smeared with a little rice and pulverized charcoal and it is then fit for use. The other is made of cloth, first stiffened with rice water, doubled in folds, resembling a book, and is then covered with a composition of charcoal and several gums. The writing on either these may be effaced by a wet cloth. The pencil used is called Buttapa, a kind of white clay substance, somewhat resembling a crayon, with the exception of being rather harder. 10. Having attained a thorough knowledge of the letters, the scholar next learns to write the compounds, or the manner of embodying the symbols of the vowels in the consonants and the formation of syllables, etc., then the names of men, villages, animals, etc., and finally arithmetical signs. He then commits to memory an addition table, and counts from one to a hundred; he afterwards writes easy sums in addition, and subtraction of money; multiplication and the reduction of money, measures, etc. Here great pains are taken with the scholars, in teaching him the fractions of an integer, which descend, not be tens as in our decimal fractions, but by fours, and are carried to a great extent. In order that these fractions, together with the arith- metical table, in addition, multiplication, and those on the threefold measures of capacity, weight, and extent, may be ren- dered quite familiar to the minds of the scholars, they are made to stand up twice a day, in rows, and repeat the whole after one of the monitors. 11. The other parts of a native education consist in deciphering various kinds of hand writing, in public and other letters, which the school master collects from the different sources; writing common letters, drawing up forms of agreement; reading; fables and legendary tales; and committing various kinds of poetry to memory, chiefly with a view to attain distinctness and clearness in pronunciation, together with readiness and correctness in reading any kind of composition. 188

12. The three books which are most common in all the schools, and which are used indiscriminately by the several castes, are the Ramayanum, Maha Bharata, and Bhagvata; but the children of the manufacturing class of people have in addition to the above, books peculiar to their own religious tenets; such as the Nagalingayna Kutha, Vishvakurma Poorana, Kumalesherra Kalikamahata; and those who wear the Lingum such as the Busvapoorana, Raghavankunkauya Geeroja Kullana, Unabhavamoorta, Chenna Busavaswara Poorana, Gurilagooloo, etc., which are all considered sacred, and are studied with a view of subserving their several religious creeds.
13. The lighter kind of stories which are read for amusement, are generally the Punchatantra, Bhatalapunchavansatee, Punklee Soopooktahuller, Mahantarungenee. The books on the principles of the vernacular languages themselves, are the several dictionaries and grammars, such as the Nighantoo, Umara, Subdamumbured, Shubdeemunee Durpana, Vyacurna Andradeepeca, Andhranamasungraha, etc., etc., but these last, and similar books, which are most essential, and, without which, no accurate or extensive knowledge of the vernacular languages can be attained, are, from the high price of manuscripts and the general poverty of the masters, of all books, the most uncommon in the Native Schools; and such of them which are found there are in consequence of the ignorance, carelessness, and indolence of copyists in general, full of blunders, and in every way most incorrect and imperfect.
14. The whole of the books, however, in the Teloogoo and Carnataca schools, which are by far the most numerous in this district, whether they treat of religion, amusement, or the principles of these languages, are in verse; and in a dialect quite distinct from that of conversation and business. The alphabets of the two dialects are the same, and he who reads the one, can read, but not understand, the other also. The natives, therefore, read these (unintelligible) books to them, to acquire the power of reading letters, in the common dialect of business; but the poetical is quite distinct from the prose dialect, which they speak and write; and though they read these books, it is to the pronunciation of the syllables, not to the meaning or construc- tion of the words, that they attend. Indeed few teachers can explain, and still fewer scholars understand, the purport of the numerous books which they thus learn to repeat from memory. Every school boy can repeat verbatim a vast number of verses, of 189

the meaning of which, he knows no more than the parrot that has been taught to utter certain words. Accordingly, from studies, in which he has spent many a day of laborious, but fruitless toil, the native scholar gains no improvement, except the exercise of memory and the power to read and write on the common business of life; he makes no addition to his stock of useful knowledge, and acquires no moral impressions. He has spent his youth in reading syllables, not words, and, on entering into life, he meets with hundreds and thousands of books of the meaning of which he can form not even the most distant conjecture, and as to the declension of a noun, or the conjugation of a verb, he knows no more than of the most abstruse problem in Euclid. It is not to be wondered at, with such an imperfect education, that, in writing a common letter to their friends, orthographical errors and other violations of grammar, may be met with in almost every line written by a native. 15. The government could not promote the improved education of their native subjects in these districts more, than by patronizing versions, in the common prose and spoken dialect, of the most moral parts of their popular poets and elementary works, now committed to memory in unintelligible verse. He who could read would then understand what he reads, which is far from the case at present. I am acquainted with many persons very capable of executing such a task; and, in the Teloogoo language, would gladly superintend it, as far as is in my power, at this distance from the Presidency. 16. The economy with which children are taught to write in the native schools, and the system by which the more advanced scholars are caused to teach the less advanced and at the same time to confirm their own knowledge is certainly admirable, and well deserved the imitation it has received in England. The chief defects in the native schools are the nature of the books and learning taught and the want of competent masters. 17. Imperfect, however, as the present education of the natives is, there are a few who possess the means to command it for their children even were books of a proper kind plentiful and the master every way adequate to the task imposed upon him, he would make no advance from one class to another, except as he might be paid for his labour. While learning the first rudiments, it is common for the scholar to pay to the teacher a quarter 190

of a rupee, and when arrived as far as to write on paper, or at the higher branches of arithmetic, half a rupee per mensem. But in proceeding further such as explaining books, which are all written in verse, giving the meaning of Sanscrit words, and illus- trating the principles of the vernacular languages, such demands are made as exceed the means of most parents. There is, therefore, no alternative, but that of leaving their children only partially instructed, and consequently ignorant of the most essential and useful parts of a liberal education. But there are multitudes who cannot even avail themselves of the advantages of this system, defective as it is. 18. I am sorry to state that this is ascribable to the gradual but general impoverishment of the country. The means of the manufacturing classes have been, of late years greatly dimin- ished, by the introduction of our own European manufactures, in lieu of the Indian cotton fabrics. The removal of many of our troops, from our own territories, to the distant frontiers of our newly subsidized allies, has also, of late years, affected the demand for grain, the transfer of the capital of the country, from the Native Governments, and their Officers, who liberally expended it in India, to Europeans, restricted by law from em- ploying it even temporarily in India, and daily draining it from the land, has likewise tended to this effect which has not been alleviated by a less rigid enforcement of the revenue due to the state. The greater part of the middling and lower classes of the people are now unable to defray the expenses incident upon the education of their offspring, while their necessities require the assistance of their children as soon as their tender limbs are capable of the smallest labour. 19. It cannot have escaped the Government that of nearly a million of souls in this district, not 7,000 are now at school; a proportion which exhibits but too strongly the result above stated. In many villages, where formerly there were schools, there are now none; and in many others, where there were large schools, now only a few of the children of the most opulent are taught, others being unable, from poverty, to attend or to pay what is demanded. 20. Such is the state, in this district, of the various schools, in which reading writing, and arithmetic, are taught in the vernacular dialects of the country, as has been always usual in India, by teachers who are paid by their scholars. The higher branches of learning on the contrary, have always, in this 191