The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c10.s4.10

c10.s4.10

To begin with, I need hardly point out to you that, at the time under reference, no country in the world had anything like definite, authoritative, statistical information of the type one would now recognise as proper proof in such discussions. In India particularly, thanks to the distracted state of the country, it was impossible to provide any such material on a nation-wide basis, even supposing it had been customary to compile such information from time to time. The elaborate ‘directory’, if I may so describe it, of the territories under his rule, compiled by the indefatigable Minister of the great Akbar known as the Ayeen-i-Akbari, was prepared so long before the advent of the British that I feel a hesitation even in referring to it, apart from the further fact that authoritative work suffers from other blemishes in the eyes of a too critical reader. All, therefore, that one can expect by way of proof in such matters, and at such a time, can only be in the form of impressions of people in a position to form ideas a little better and more scientific than those of less fortunately situated, or less well endowed, observers. Such official investigations as were ordered in connection with the periodical parliamentary enquiries before the renewal of the Company’s Charter in 1793, 1813, 1833, and 1853 also afford some data, though these have their own defect as is pointed out below. Other official enquiries, reports, or obiter dicta of qualified officers, were originally for a purpose different from the one under reference here; and, therefore, discussion or observation on educational matters therein must needs be taken as incidental rather than as the immediate subject of their concern, and consequently open to such defects as all such incidental observation suffers from.