The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c8.s1.t9.7

c8.s1.t9.7

In 1821, the junior Member and Secretary of the General Committee of Public Instruction, H.H. Wilson, Esquire, in prosecuting a special investigation on which he was deputed, collected at the same time some general information respecting the state of learning at Nuddea. At that period Nuddea contained about twenty-five establishments for study. These are called *tols*, and consist of a thatched chamber for the pundit and the class, and two or three ranges of mud-hovels in which the students reside. The pundit does not live on the spot, but comes to the *tol* every day on which study is lawful at an early hour and remains till sunset. The huts are built and kept in repair at his expense, and he not only gives instructions gratuitously but assists to feed and clothe his class, his means of so doing being derived from former grants by the rajah of Nuddea, and presents made to him by the zemindars in the neighbourhood at religious festivals, the value of which much depends on his celebrity as a teacher. The students are all full-grown men, some of them old men. The usual number in a *tol* is about twenty or twenty-five, but in some places, where the pundit is of high repute, there are from fifty to sixty. The whole number is said to be between 500 and 600. The greater proportion consists of natives of Bengal, but there are many from remote parts of India, especially from the south. There are some from Nepaul and Assam, and many from the eastern districts, especially Tirhoot. Few if any have means of subsistence of their own. Their dwelling they obtain from their teacher, and their clothes and food in presents from him and the shop-keepers and land-holders in the town or neighbourhood. At the principal festivals they disperse for a few days in quest of alms, when they collect enough to sustain them till the next interval of leisure. The chief study at Nuddea is *nyayu* or logic; there are also some establishments for tuition in law, chiefly in the works of Raghunandana, a celebrated Nuddea pundit, and in one or two places grammar is taught. Some of the students, particularly several from the Dekhin, speak Sanscrit with great fluency and correctness.