The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c3.9

c3.9

*The Beautiful Tree* is not being presented with a view to decry British rule. Rather, it is the continuation of an effort to comprehend, to the extent it is possible for this author, through material of this kind relating to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the reality of the India of this period: its society, its infra-structure, its manners and institutions, their strengths and weaknesses. The book touches on another aspect of this India in more or less the same manner as the author’s two earlier books in this field, *Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century*,¹⁹ and *Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition*.²⁰ Furthermore, an attempt has been made in the Introduction to situate the information on the indigenous Indian education of the period in its temporal context and, with that in view, brief mention is made of the state of education in England until the beginning of the nineteenth century.