प्राचीन भारत में शिक्षा (डॉ. ए.एस. अल्तेकर - गुरुकुल एवं बौद्ध विहार शिक्षण इतिहास)

224 EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA [Ch.
to the 19th century; some of them, if unfortunately
widowed, would devote themselves to learning and
even become teachers.¹ Jain widows too were
sometimes taught reading and writing by the monks
with a view to enable them to read their scriptures.²
These were, however, exceptional cases. Society as
a whole had become prejudiced against female
education. It was believed that a girl taught to
read and write aym become a widow soon after
her marriage.³ The decline in literacy after the
13th century was so rapid that by the beginning of
the 19th century hardly one woman in hundred
could read. Such was the state of affairs in Malva
and also in Madras presidency. In the latter
province in 1826 only 4023 girls were attending
schools as against 1,57,664 boys.⁴ According to the
then population of the presidency, 16 percent of the
boys of the school going age were receiving primary
education; the percentage of girls receiving the
same was therefore less than one half. In certain
sections of Hindu population as among the Nāyars,
literacy was much higher, but such groups were few
and exceptional. All the available evidence shows
that by the beginning of the 19th century, about 99
per cent of women population had grown illiterate.

1. Ward refers to one such case of a Kulina widow, Hati
   Vidyalamkāra, who removed from Bengal to Benares and obtained
   some pupils there. A View of Hindus, II p. 508.
2. Malcolm, Memoirs, II, 159.
3. Spark: Vernaculur Education in Bengal, pp. 43-44.
4. Report of the Madras Prov. Committee, p. 5.