The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c3.8

c3.8

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.