Education in Ancient India c11.s2.48

c11.s2.48

Female Education during 1200—1800 A. D. : It will be interesting to take here a rapid bird's eye view of the fortunes of female education during the next six centuries. During the Muslim rule the percentage of literacy among women went down very rapidly. Old, rich and cultured families were as a rule ruined by the political revolution, and they were no longer in a position to make special arrangements for the education of their girls. There were of course no schools for girls. Some new Hindu families did no doubt rise to importance under the new regime. But their number was very small and they did not generally possess sufficient culture to induce them to appoint teachers for their girls. Daughters of Rajput chiefs and some Bengali Zemindars were usually able to read and write down 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 may 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.