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

...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
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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
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