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

XVII
COLLECTOR OF VIZAGAPATAM TO BOARD OF
REVENUE:
14.4.1823
(TNSA: BRP: Vol.947 Pro.1.5.1823 pp.3847-50 Nos.6-7)

1. I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your
   Secretary's letter of the 25th July last requiring a Statement of
   Schools and Colleges in this District.
2. Having now acquired the desired information I beg leave
   to forward the statement which is drawn out according to the
   prescribed Form.
   Waltair Collector's
   Cutcherry, J. Smith,
   14th April 1823.
   Collector
   .
   (Statement on following pages)
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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)
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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