The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c4.s1.3

c4.s1.3

Around the same time, a similar vein of thought and some corresponding action had started amongst those who had been entrusted with the exercise of political power and the carrying out of the policies and instructions from London, within India. The more practical and immediate purposes of governance (following Adam Ferguson) led to the writing of works on Hindu and Muslim law, investigations into the rights of property and the revenues of various areas, and to assist all this, to a cultivation of Sanskrit and Persian amongst some of the British themselves. Acquaintance with these languages was felt necessary so as to enable the British to discover better, or to discard, choose, or select what suited their purpose most. In the process some of them also developed a personal interest in Sanskrit and other Indian literature for its own sake, or for the sort of reasons which Prof. Maconochie had in view. Charles Wilkins, William Jones, F.W. Ellis in Madras, and Lt Wilford (the latter got engaged in some very exotic research at Varanasi) were amongst the more well known men of this category.