The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c8.s1.t1.2.2

c8.s1.t1.2.2

They are next instructed to write on the palm-leaf with a reed-pen held in the fist not with the fingers, and with ink made of charcoal which rubs out, joining vowels to the consonants, forming compound letters, syllables, and words, and learning tables of numeration, money, weight, and measure, and the correct mode of writing the distinctive names of persons, castes, and places. This is continued about a year. The iron style is now used only by the teacher in sketching on the palm-leaf the letters which the scholars are required to trace with ink. They are next advanced to the study of arithmetic and the use of the plantain-leaf in writing with ink made of lamp-black, which is continued about six months, during which they are taught addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and the simplest cases of mensuration of land and commercial and agricultural accounts, together with the modes of address proper in writing letters to different persons. The last stage of this limited course of instruction is that in which the scholars are taught to write with lamp-black ink on paper, and are further instructed in agricultural and commercial accounts and in the composition of letters. In country places the rules of arithmetic are principally applied to agricultural and in towns to commercial accounts; but in both town and country schools the instruction is superficial and defective.