The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c4.s4.t7: Institutions of Sanskritic Learning
The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c4.s4.t7
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Institutions of Sanskritic Learning
c4.s4.t7.1
The schools of Sanskritic learning in the surveyed districts (in all 353) numbered as high as 190 in Burdwan (1,358 scholars) and as low as 27 in South Behar (437 scholars). The teachers (355 in all) were predominantly Brahmins, only 5 being from the Vaidya caste. The subjects predominantly taught were Grammar (1,424 students), Logic (378 students), Law (336 students) and Literature (120 students). Others, in order of numbers studying them, were Mythology (82 students), Astrology (78 students), Lexicology (48 students), Rhetoric (19 students), Medicine (18 students), Vedanta (13 students), Tantra (14 students), Mimansa (2 students), and Sankhya (1 student). The duration of the study and the ages when it was started and completed varied a great deal from subject to subject, and also from district to district.
c4.s4.t7.2
The study of Grammar started at the earliest age (9 to 12 years) and of Law, Mythology, Tantras, etc. after the age of 20. The period of study ordinarily lasted from about 7 to 15 years.
c4.s4.t7.3
*Institutions Teaching Persian and Arabic*
c4.s4.t7.4
Those studying Persian (which Adam treated more as a school subject than as a matter of higher learning) numbered 3,479, the largest, 1,424, being in South Behar. The age of admission in them ranged from 6.8 years to 10.3 years, and the study seemed to have continued for some 11 to 15 years. Over half of those studying Persian were Hindoos, the Kayasthas being predominant.⁶¹
c4.s4.t7.5
Arabic was being studied by 175 scholars, predominantly Muslims; but 14 Kayasthas, 2 Aguris, 1 Teli, and 1 Brahmin were also students of Arabic. The books used in Persian learning were numerous and an appreciable number for the study of Arabic.
c4.s4.t7.6
Finally, as far as age was concerned, the teachers in all types of institutions were largely in their thirties.
c4.s4.t7.7
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