The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c8.s1.t5.3.2

c8.s1.t5.3.2

Those who study law or logic continue reading either at one college or another for six, eight, or even ten years. When a person has obtained all the knowledge possessed by one teacher, he makes some respectful excuse to his guide and avails himself of the instructions of another. Mr Ward, from whom many of the preceding details have been copied estimates that ‘amongst one hundred thousand Brahmans, there may be one thousand who learn the grammar of the Sunskritu, of whom four or five hundred may read some parts of the *kavyu* (or poetical literature), and fifty some parts of the *ulunkaru* (or rhetorical) shastras. Four hundred of this thousand may read some of the *smriti* (or law works); but not more than ten any part of the *tuntrus* (or the mystical and magical treatises of modern Hinduism). Three hundred may study the *nyayu* (or logic), but only five or six the *meemangsu*, (explanatory of the ritual of the veds), the *sunkhyu* (a system of philosophical materialism), the *vedantu* (illustrative of the spiritual portions of the veds), the *patunjulu* (a system of philosophical asceticism), the *vaisheshika* (a system of philosophical anti-materialism), or the *veda* (the most ancient and sacred writings of Hindoos). Ten persons in this number of Brahmans may become learned in the astronomical shastras, while ten more understand these very imperfectly.