The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c7.7

c7.7

‘In the meantime,’ he says, ‘while the burthens were getting in order, I entertained myself in the porch of the temple, beholding little boys learning arithmetic after a strange manner, which I will here relate. They were four, and having all taken the same lesson before the master, to get that same by heart, and repeat likewise their former lessons, and not forget them, one of them singing musically with a certain continued tone,² (which hath the force of making a deep impression in the memory) recited part of the lesson; as for example, “one by itself makes one”; and whilst he was thus speaking, he writ down the same number, not with any kind of pen, nor in paper, but (not to spend paper in vain) with his finger on the ground, the pavement being for other might correct him. Indeed a pretty, easy and secure way of learning.’⁴