The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c6.14

c6.14

The other sciences and branches of learning taught to the Indian youth are: Poetry, *Gavya*; Fencing, *Payatta*; Botany and medicine, *Vaydyassastra*, or *Bheszagiashastra*: Navigation, *Naushastra*: The use of the spear on foot (*Hastiludium*), *Cundera*: The art of playing at ball, *Pandacali*: Chess, *Ciudarangam*: Tennis, *Coladi*: Logic, *Tarkashastra*: Astrology, *Giodisha*: Law, *Svadhyaya*: Silence, *Mauna*. (Youth destined to be Brahmans, must spend ten years within the precincts of the temple at Trichur, and avoid all intercourse with the female sex. They are obliged also to observe the strictest silence, which continues for five years. This is the first degree of philosophy. A. It thence appears, that Phthagoras must have borrowed his philosophy in part from the Indian Philosophers, or others whose doctrine was similar, for his scholars were subjected to silence for the same number of years. See *Diogenes Lacrtus*, lib. viii. 10, *and Aul. Gollius*, Noct, Att, 1-ib. i. 9F.) The reader will have already remarked, that surgery, anatomy, and geography are excluded from this catalogue. The Indians are of opinion, that their country is the most beautiful and happiest in the whole world: and for that reason they have very little desire to be acquainted with foreign kingdoms. Their total abstinence from all flesh, and the express prohibition of their religion which forbids them to kill animals, prevent them from dissecting them and examining their internal construction.