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

In memory of Shri Jayaprakash Narayan for his unflagging interest and guidance in this work. 5

...That does not finish the picture. We have the education of this future state. I say without fear of my figures being challenged successfully, that today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British administrators, when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root, and left the root like that, and the beautiful tree perished. The village schools were not good enough for the British administrator, so he came out with his programme. Every school must have so much paraphernalia, building, and so forth. Well, there were no such schools at all. There are statistics left by a British administrator which show that, in places where they have carried out a survey, ancient schools have gone by the board, because there was no recognition for these schools, and the schools established after the European pattern were too expensive for the people, and therefore they could not possibly overtake the thing. I defy anybody to fulfill a programme of compulsory primary education of these masses inside of a century. This very poor country of mine is ill able to sustain such an expensive method of education. Our state would revive the old village schoolmaster and dot every village with a school both for boys and girls. (MAHATMA GANDHI AT CHATHAM HOUSE, LONDON, OCTOBER 20, 1931) ...I have not left off the pursuit of the subject of education in the villages during the pre-British period. I am in correspondence with several educationists. Those who have replied do support my view but do not produce authority that would be accepted as proof. My prejudice or presentiment still makes me cling to the statement I made at Chatham House. I don't want to write haltingly in Harijan. You don't want me merely to say that the proof I had in mind has been challenged by you! (GANDHIJI TO SIR PHILIP HARTOG, SEGAON, AUGUST, 1939) 6

CONTENTS Preface 1 Introduction 7 DOCUMENTS: A. Survey of Indigenous Education in the Madras Presidency 1822-26 89 B. Fra Paolino Da Bartolomeo on Education of Children in India, 1796 256 C. Alexander Walker on Indian Education, Literature, etc., circa, 1820 262 D. Extracts from W. Adam's State of Education in Bengal: 1835-38 270 E. Extracts from G.W. Leitner's History of Education in the Punjab since Annexation and in 1882 343 F. Correspondence between Sir Philip Hartog and Mahatma Gandhi on the Question of Indigenous Indian Education in the Early British Period, and other papers 348 G. List of Tanjore Temples Receiving Revenue Assignments 386 List of Individuals in Tanjore receiving Revenue Assignments 413 Index 421 7

8

Preface A great deal of scholarly work has been published on the history of education in India, especially during the 1930s, and 1940s. In fact, writings on the subject, initially by British officials-cum- scholars, started to appear as early as the mid-nineteenth cen- tury. Most of these histories, however, relate to the ancient period, sometimes going as far back as the tenth or twelfth century A.D. Others deal with the history of education during British rule and thereafter. Besides detailed scholarly works on specific ancient educational institutions (such as those at Nalanda or Taxila), there are more general works like that of A.S. Altekar¹ on the ancient period. For the later period, there have been several publications: besides the two volumes of Selections from Educational Records, published and recently reprinted by the Government of India itself,² the work of S. Nurullah and J.P. Naik may be mentioned here.³ The latter work is interestingly described by the two authors (thus indicating its time and mood) as an attempt at a ‘well-documented and comprehensive account of Indian educational history during the last one hundred and sixty years and to interpret it from the Indian point of view.’⁴ Reaching a far wider audience is the voluminous work of Pandit Sundarlal, first published in 1939,⁵ though perhaps less academic. The 36th chapter of this celebrated work entitled, ‘The Destruction of Indian Indigenous Education’, runs into 40 pages, 1

and quotes extensively from various British authorities. These span almost a century: from the Dispatch from England of 3rd June 1814 to the Governor General in India, to the observations of Max Mueller; and the 1909 remarks of the British labour leader, Keir Hardie. However, given the period in which the book was written and the inaccessibility of the detailed manuscript records, it was inevitable that the author had to base his work entirely on existing printed sources. Nevertheless, as an introduction, this chapter of Bharat men Angreji Raj is a landmark on the subject of indigenous Indian education in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Very little, however, has been written on the history, or state of education during this period, starting with the thirteenth century and up until the early nineteenth century. Undoubtedly, there are a few works like that of S.M. Jaffar⁶ pertaining to Muslim education. There are a chapter or two, or some cursory references in most educational histories pertaining to the period of British rule, and to the decayed state of indigenous Indian education in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Nurullah and Naik’s book⁷ devotes the first 43 pages (out of 643 pages) to discussing the state of indigenous education in the early nineteenth century, and in challenging certain later British views about the nature and extent of it. Most of the discussion on the state of indigenous Indian education in the early nineteenth century, and the differing view- points which give rise to it, use as their source material (a) the much talked about reports by William Adam, a former Christian missionary, on indigenous education in some of the districts of Bengal and Bihar 1835-8,⁸ (b) published extracts of a survey made by the British authorities regarding indigenous education in the Bombay Presidency during the 1820s,⁹ and (c) published extracts from another wider survey of indigenous education made 2

in the Madras Presidency (from Ganjam in the north to Tinnevelly in the south, and Malabar in the west) during 1822- 25.¹⁰ A much later work on the subject, but more or less of a similar nature is that of G.W. Leitner pertaining to indigenous education in the Punjab.¹¹ Amongst the above-mentioned sources, G.W. Leitner’s work, based on earlier governmental documents and on his own survey, is the most explicitly critical of British policies. It holds the British authorities responsible for the decay, and even the destruction of indigenous education in the Punjab—the area with which his book is concerned. The reports of Adam, as well as the reports of some of the collectors in the Madras Presidency¹² refer likewise to the decay of indigenous education in the areas of India with which they were concerned. Of course, they do so much less explicitly—and in language more suited to British officers and gentlemen—(Leitner, though a British official, was ‘not an Englishman’).¹³ Mahatma Gandhi’s long address at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London on 20 October, 1931, stated that literacy had declined in India in the past 50-100 years and held the British responsible for it. The statement provided a real edge to the observations of Adam, Leitner, and others and to the view which Indians had held for decades. It was then that all the above sources relating to indigenous education in the earlier part of the nineteenth century assumed their great importance. The person who, perhaps not only as an individual, but also as a representative of British rule in India, contested what Gandhiji had said was Sir Philip Hartog, one time vice-chancellor of Dacca University, and chairman of the ‘auxiliary committee of the Indian Statutory Commission’. He asked Gandhiji for ‘precise references to the printed documents on which’ Gandhiji’s ‘state- ments were based.’¹⁴ Not finding satisfaction (during much of this period Gandhiji and his colleagues were in prison) Hartog, four 3

years later delivered a series of three lectures at the University of London Institute of Education with the aim of countering Gandhiji’s statement. After adding three memoranda and necessary references, Hartog got these published in book form in 1939.15 Countering Gandhiji and the earlier sources in this manner, Sir Philip Hartog was really not being original. He was merely following a well-trodden British path in defence of British acts and policies in India; a path which had been charted some 125 years earlier by William Wilberforce, later considered as the father of Victorian England, in the British House of Commons.16 Hartog had been preceded in his own time in a similar enterprise by W.H. Moreland, who could not accept Vincent Smith’s observation that ‘the hired labourer in the time of Akbar and Jahangir probably had more to eat in ordinary years than he has now.’17 Smith’s challenge appears to have led Moreland from the life of a retired senior revenue settlement officer into the role of an economic historian of India.18 Quite understandably, at least till the 1940s, and burdened as they were with a sense of mission, the British could not accept any criticism of their actions, deliberate, or otherwise, in India (or elsewhere) during the two centuries of their rule. A major part of the documents reproduced in this book pertain to the Madras Presidency Indigenous Education Survey. These were first seen by this writer in 1966. As mentioned above, an abstract of this survey was included in the House of Commons Papers as early as 1831-32. Yet, while many scholars must have come across the detailed material in the Madras Presidency District Records, as well as the Presidency Revenue Records (the latter incidentally exist in Madras as well as in London), for some unexplained reasons this material seems to have escaped academic attention. The recent Madras University doctoral thesis pertaining to the various Madras Presidency districts covering this period also does not seem to have made any use of this data, despite the fact that some of it does contain some occasional reference to matters of education. The Beautiful Tree is not being presented with a view to decry British rule. Rather, it is the continuation of an effort to 4

comprehend, to the extent it is possible for this author, through material of this kind relating to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the reality of the India of this period: its society, its infra-structure, its manners and institutions, their strengths and weaknesses. The book touches on another aspect of this India in more or less the same manner as the author's two earlier books in this field, Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century,$^{19}$ and Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition.$^{20}$ Furthermore, an attempt has been made in the Introduction to situate the information on the indigenous Indian education of the period in its temporal context and, with that in view, brief mention is made of the state of education in England until the beginning of the nineteenth century. A number of friends have taken interest in this material and offered me their valuable advice and opinion during the past several years. I am grateful to all of them. Without their support and encouragement, this work may never have been completed. Even more so, I am greatly indebted to the University of Oxford for being kind enough to consult their University archives in order to answer some of my queries pertaining to the academic courses, etc., at Oxford at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Similarly, I am much obliged to the India Office Library & Records (I.O.R.), and to Mr Martin Moir in particular, for supplying me with copies of the Hartog-Gandhi correspondence. I am also obliged to the A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna, for offering me a senior fellowship of the institute during 1972-73 and to the Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi, the Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi, the Gandhi Seva Sangh, Sevagram, and the Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development, New Delhi, for interest in and support to this venture, as occasion demanded. The text of the Madras Presidency material (included in the Annexures), though first consulted in the India Office Library, is taken from the records in the Tamilnadu State Archives (pre- viously the Madras Record Office). For this facility, and for much kindness and consideration shown to me, my thanks go to the fairly over-worked staff of the Archives. The note by Alexander Walker, also reproduced here, is from the Walker of Bowland 5

Papers in the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. My sincere thanks go to the National Library for permission and facilities to consult these and other papers, as also to the Scottish Record Office, the University of Edinburgh, and the Uttar Pradesh State Archives, Allahabad, for similar permission and facilities. Finally, I am honoured by the Ashram Pratishthan, Sevagram, for extending me an invitation to write this book in the Ashram, and for providing me the necessary facilities and for treating me as one of their own. Completing this work living near Gandhiji’s hut has indeed been a great privilege.

The title of this book has been taken from the speech which Mahatma Gandhi had made at Chatham House, London, on 20 October, 1931. He had said: ...the British administrators, when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root, and left the root like that, and the beautiful tree per- ished. The subtitle has also been chosen accordingly. Although the Madras Presidency data which forms the bulk of this book was collected during 1822-25, the educational system to which the data pertained was much older. It was still the dominant system during the 18th century, after which it started decaying very rapidly. The Adam Reports reflect that decline in the fourth decade of the 19th century. February 19, 1981. DHARAMPAL Ashram Pratishthan, Sevagram. Notes

1. A.S. Altekar: Education in Ancient India, 2nd Ed., Benares, 1944.
2. National Archives of India: Selections from the Educational Records, I:1781-1839, II:1840-1859 by H.Sharp and J.A. Richey 1920, 1922 (reprinted 1965).
3. Syed Nurullah and J.P. Naik: History of Education in India during the British Period, Bombay, 1943.
4. Ibid, Preface.
5. Bharat mein Angreji Raj (in Hindi). While its first edition in 1929 was immediately banned by the British, it was again published in 1939 in three volumes (1780 pages), and has not only been republished again, but has become a classic of its kind, providing a detailed account (pri
6. S.M. Jaffar: Education in Muslim India, Peshawar, 1936.
7. History of Education in India during the British period, 1943.
8. W. Adam: Reports on the State of Education in Bengal 1835 and 1838, edited by Anathnath Basu and reprinted, Calcutta, 1941. 6

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