The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c4.12

c4.12

School education, especially elementary education at the people's level, remained an uncommon commodity till around 1800. Nonetheless, the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh were perhaps as important for Britain as Taxila and Nalanda were in ancient India; or places like Navadweep were as late as the later part of the 18th century.²¹ Since many of those who began to come to India from Britain especially after 1773 as travellers, scholars, or judges had had their education in one of these three universities,²² it may be relevant to provide here a brief account of the courses studied together with the number of students, in one of these universities around 1800. The university chosen here is that of Oxford, and it is assumed that this information is also fairly representative of studies at Cambridge and Edinburgh at this period.