Education in Ancient India c9.s3: Primary Education during

Education in Ancient India c9.s3

Language: English

Primary Education during

The Time of Commencement :—Primary education was assigned a definite place in the educational system during this period by the exaltation of its beginning into a religious ritual known as *Aksharasvīkaraṇa* (see Appendix I A), which was performed at about the age of five or six. This was the time for the beginning of primary education. Authors of this period represent the Buddha, Raghu, Lava and Kuśa as beginning their education at about this age.² The Chinese pilgrim I-tsing also found that primary education used to begin at the age of six.

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² *Lalitavistāra*, Canto 10; *Raghuvamśa*, Canto III, *Uttara-Rāmacharit*, Act II.

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Scope of Primary Education :—Boys began their study with the primary and compound alphabets and used to spend about six months in mastering them. Then about a year was spent in mastering elementary arithmetic. Down to *c.* 250 A.D. Prakrits were in ascendancy¹ and so students must have spent some time in mastering them. After about 250 A. D. Sanskrit regained its position and even primary education became to some extent influenced by it. During the later stages of primary education boys used to study the Sūtras of Pāṇini and some other simple grammatical works from the age of 8 to 11.²

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¹ During the period *c.* 250 B.C. to *c.* 250 A D. most of the public documents are seen to be composed in Pali or Prakrits. Sanskrit appears in inscriptions very rarely. So this period is regarded as a period of the ascendancy of Prakrits; there is a tradition to the effect that the Sātavāhana kings of the Deccan had decreed that all their public documents should be in Prakrit alone (*Kāvyamīmāṃsā*, p. 50). This tradition is confirmed by the inscriptions of the house. The Guptas were champions of Sanskrit and had decreed that Sanskrit should be spoken even in their harems, (*Ibid*, p. 50). Their records are all in Sanskrit.

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² I-tsing, chap. XXXIV.

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The Method of Teaching :—The present generation cannot easily imagine the methods of teaching in primary schools in an age when paper and cheap text books were unknown. Boys of the rich used to write on wooden boards in some kind of colour. There is a sculpture in the Peshawar Museum representing the Buddha in his primary school as holding a rectangular board in his hand and engaged in writing upon it.³ Poorer students used to write on ground, covered with sand or dust. There was no pencil; they used pointed sticks or their own fingers for writing the alphabet. The latter method incidently trained the muscles, the necessity of which is advocated in the Montessori method. The teacher used to write one alphabet on the board and the boys used to shout out its name, as they went on writing it on wooden boards or sand-covered ground. This method is graphically described in a book of the early centuries of the Christian era¹ and prevailed down to recent times. The multiplication tables were recited similarly by the whole class, following the lead given by the teacher or the monitor. Boys had no primers or text books with them down to the middle of the last century, and guardians had not to meet a never ending demand of the school for fresh exercises and copybooks. The practice in writing was not given on paper, for none existed. Boys first acquired the mastery in writing the alphabet on the sand board. When this was done, teachers used to write on a palm leaf with an iron style and hand over the leaf to the pupil for tracing the letters on the same leaf with charcoal ink, which was rubbed out at the end of the day. The same palm leaf thus served as a model for several days and several boys. When the fingers of boys had acquired the necessary suppleness, they were then asked to write on plaintain leaves. When they were well practised in writing on plaintain leaves, they were taught to write on the palm leaf.² More practice was given in writing than in reading, as books were rather rare.

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³ *A. S. R.*, 1903-4, pp. 246-7 and Pl. LXVI, 1.

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¹ Cf. तत्र बोधिसत्वाधिष्ठानेन तेषां दारकाणां मातृकां वाचयतां यदा अकारं परिकीर्तयन्ति स्म तदा अनित्यः संस्कारशब्दो निश्चरति स्म । *Lalitavistāra*, Chap. X.

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² Stark, *Vernacular Education*, pp. 28-48.

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Primary Schools and Teachers : Only occasionally our sources refer to primary schools and teachers; they are usually described as *lipiśālās* (alphabet schools) and dārakāchāryas (teachers of little children) respectively.¹ Public schools even for higher education did not exist down to c. 400 A. D.; it is no wonder that they should have been very scarce also for primary education for a long time. Education was thus mostly imparted by private teachers in private schools. Family priests continued to impart primary education for a fairly long time. From about the 5th century A. D. a great impetus was given to higher education by the founding of a number of public schools and colleges. This must have given an indirect impetus to primary education also; for the less capable products of these institutions may have taken to primary education as a career. Primary teachers, by no means highly qualified for their task, figured in Kashmir society during the 10th century A. D.;² the same may have been the case elsewhere also. Sometimes primary teachers were employed by the rich to educate their family children and the children of other villagers were also allowed to read along with them. If a village had not a rich person to engage a teacher on his own account, a number of guardians used to cooperate in engaging the services of a teacher, each paying according to his ability. In the majority of cases, however, private teachers used to start schools on their own initiative, relying upon the uncertain income of voluntary fees and contributions from the guardians of students. The average income of a teacher in Bengal just before the advent of the British rule was more or less equal to the emoluments of the village accountant;³ the same may have been the case throughout the earlier history. In some localities in Madras presidency teachers used to receive grain-shares at the time of harvest just like carpenters or smiths; this system does not seem to have been universal,¹ for the services of a teacher were not required by every villager, as was the case with those of a smith or potter. Primary teachers usually belonged to the families of the village accountants, priests, writers (Kayasthas) or traders, which were invariably literate. Like the teachers of the Vedas, they were not exclusively Brahmanas. This was the case even in the Smṛiti period; for some the Smṛiti writers refer with disapproval to the custom of non-Brahmanas being the teachers of Brahmanas.

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¹ लिपिशालामुपनीयते स्म कुमारः । तत्र विश्वामित्रो नाम दारकाचार्यः । Lalita-vistāra, Chap. X.

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² Rājatarangiṇī, Vol. I, pp. 134 & 196 (Eng. Tr.)

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³ Stark, Vernacular Education in Bengal, pp. 28 ff.

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¹ Report of the Madras Provincial Committee, Evidence, pp. 20, 154, 173.

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Extent of Literacy at *c.* 800 A. D. :—Upanayana, which had given an indirect impetus to the spread of literacy, gradually ceased to be performed in the case of the Kshatriyas and Vaishyas during the first five centuries of the Christian era. Automatic initiation into the 3 R's, which was ensured by this ritual, thus ceased gradually to be a reality with the majority of the Aryans. This gave a setback to the spread of literacy during this period. Vaishyas engaged in trade were literate and often cultured; the members of the guild of weavers at Mandsore in Malva were well versed in folklore and astrology during the 5th century A.D.² The same may have been the case with better class traders and merchants during this period. Kshatriyas engaged in administrative work were of course literate. It is however doubtful whether the ordinary agriculturist or soldier, who had inherited no cultural tradition and who had discontinued Upanayana at this time, were literate. Literacy among the males of the three higher castes must have been hardly more than about 40 percent towards the end of the 8th century A. D. The Shudras, who formed the bulk of the labouring classes, and the untouchables were all illiterate. As a class, women also had ceased to be literate towards the end of the 8th century, as has been shown already.

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² Fleet, Gupta Inscriptions, p.p. 80-7.

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PRIMARY EDUCATION DURING C. 800-1200 A. D.

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Vernaculars and Primary Education :—Vernaculars began to develop during this period and ordinary men ceased to understand Sanskrit. This must have produced a great change in the curriculum of primary education also. Those who intended to specialise in Sanskrit must have continued to spend a part of their time in early childhood in memorising dictionaries (*Koshas*) and verbal conjugations and nominal declensions. Those however who had no such ambition must have concentrated on the study of vernaculars in the primary stage. Some inscriptions of this period refer to the arrangements made for the teaching of vernaculars in the schools and colleges. A school at Talgund in Mysore state had made provision for the teaching of Canarese in the 12th century A.D.;¹ a college at Narsipur in the same state was providing for the teaching of the vernaculars,—Canarese, Telugu and Marathi,—in 1290 A. D.² If higher colleges were making provision for the teaching of the vernaculars of other provinces also, we can well conclude that primary education at this time was almost entirely dominated by vernculars.

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¹ E. C., VII, Shikarpur, No. 185.

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² Ibid, Vol. III, Narsipur, No. 27.

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The Scope of the Vernacular Education :—When Sanskrit was the spoken language in earlier days, primary education was intended to become an integral part of the higher Sanskritic studies. When Sanskrit became a dead langnage as far as the masses were concerned, primary education became Vernrcular education and developed a self-contained course. Vernacular education of the mases was organised not with a view to enable them to develop into good Sanskrit scholars, but with the object of making them efficient in their ordinary walks of life. Reading writing, commercial arithmetic, accountancy, good knowledge of vernaculars with perhaps a smattering of Sanskrit, and moral training through the stories of epics constituted the curriculum of the vernacular education at about 1200 A. D. The same continued to be the case during the subsequent centuries as well. In the case of Brahmana boys, who intended to take to Sanskritic education later, elements of Sanskrit grammar were included ; but agricultural and commercial arithmetic dominated the courses intended for students hailing from agricultural and commercial classes. How to measure the area of fields, how to deduce monthly wages from the daily ones and vice versa, how to find the prices of corn per maund when those per seer were given, etc,—questions like these engaged the attention of the teachers and students in primary schools.

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The extent of Literacy at c. 1200 A. D. With the levelling down of both the Kshatriyas and Vaishyas to the position of the Shudras, the extent of literacy must have further gone down during this period. The average farmer at this time was illiterate and members of commercial and industrial guilds were no longer as educated and cultured as those of the weavers' guild at Mandsore in *c.* 400 A. D. We have however no sufficient evidence to compute the extent of literacy at *c.* 1200 A. D. We may perhaps utilise the data about the state of affairs at the advent of British rule in this connection. The village teacher was not usually one of the grain-sharing servants supported by the village community; his services therefore were clearly required not by the whole community, but only by certain sections of it; literacy must have been confined only to them. In the second decade of the 19th century Sir Thomas Monroe found a primary school in every village; 'I am inclined' says he, 'to estimate the proportion of male population receiving education to be nearer one third than one fourth'.¹ In Bengal at this time most villages possessed schools for primary education, but the percentage of boys attending them varied in different places. In some districts² as many as 18 percent of the boys of the school going age attended schools, in others the percentage was only 3. In Malva, which for more than half a century was suffering from anarchy, Malcolm found a school in almost every village with more than 100 houses.³ It would therefore appear that about 15 percent of the boys of the school-going age were attending schools towards the beginning of the 19th century. If in spite of the prevailing unsettled conditions, about 15 percent boys were attending schools at the beginning of the 19th century, we may well conclude that the percentage may have been at least twice this figure at the end of the Hindu period. For during the Muslim rule the government educational effort for a long time was confined only to the Muslim section of the population; Hindus also could not continue to get the same state patronage for their education and literature, which was possible under their own rule. This must have affected the spread of education and the extent of literacy in the population as a whole, which was predominently Hindu. If therefore the percentage of literate male population among Indians as a whole was about 15 at the beginning of the 19th century, it may as well have been about thirty towards the end of the 12th century A. D. At the time when Upanayana was a reality with the whole of the Aryan community, we have already seen that the percentage of literacy in it must have been as high as 80. Towards the end of the 8th century A. D. it had declined to about 40, as shown already. It further went down by about another 10 percent by the 12th century A. D. These percentages however refer to male population only and are exclusive of the Shudras and Untouchables, who were as a rule all illiterate.

Linked texts (5)

Rājataraṅgiṇī — Kalhaṇa, Sanskrit
Aṣṭādhyāyī — Pāṇini, Sanskrit
Kāvyamīmāṃsā — Rājaśekhara, Sanskrit
Raghuvaṃśa — Kālidāsa, Sanskrit
Uttararāmacarita — Bhavabhūti, Sanskrit