History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c62.364

v4.c62.364

It has been shown (in H. Dh. vol. II. pp. 113, 369, 856-858) how it was the king's duty to support learned brāhmaṇas, to hold assemblies of poets and learned men, to make gifts of land to educational institutions and to promote learning in all ways. Vṛddha-Hārīta VII. 229-230 says that only learned brāhmaṇas who are endowed with *tapas* are proper objects of the king's bounty. Some emperors like Harṣa went far beyond what was reasonable. The Chinese pilgrim tells us (Beal's 'Buddhist Records &c.' vol. I pp. 214, 233) that at the end of every five years Harṣa held an assembly (*pariṣad*) at Prayāga and gave away all in charity. The Śukranītisāra (I. 368-369) holds that a king should be on the look-out for educated men, should appoint them to offices suited to their education, should honour every year those who have attained eminence in learning and the arts and take measures for the advancement of learning and arts. It has already been shown how this had been followed by ancient and medieval Indian kings to the letter. A comparison with the British Indian Government in the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th will be highly interesting. After the battle of Plassey in 1757 the British East India Company got three such rich provinces as Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. During over 50 years the only thing that was done by the ruling power for the encouragement of learning among Indians was that in 1780 Warren Hastings started a *Madrassa* of Muslim religious learning at Calcutta with a *moulvi* and 40 stipendiaries and Lord Cornwallis founded a Sanskrit college at Benares in 1792. When the East India Company's Charter was renewed in 1813 the only provision that was made for education and encouragement of learning (by George III, 1813 chap. 155, clause 43) was '*that it shall and may be lawful for the Governor-General-in-Council to direct that out of any surplus which may remain of the rents, revenues and profits arising from the said territorial acquisitions, after defraying the expenses of the military, civil and commercial establishments and paying the interest of the debt, a sum of not less than one lakh of rupees in each year shall be set apart and applied to the revival and improvement of literature and the encouragement of the learned natives of India and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of, the British territories in India*'. Detailed comment is not called for. More than 50 years after British rule began, when at least half of what is British India now had come into the hands of the British, and when the yearly income must have been many crores of rupees, the *sum of a lakh* of rupees was to be set apart for education of two kinds (Eastern and Western) in the whole of the then British India. Further this provision was not compulsory but only permissive, and was to be availed of only if some surplus was left after everything else had been provided for.