Ancient Indian Education: An Inquiry into its Origin, Development, and Ideals c8.15

c8.15

In the Report of the Education Commission of 1882 there is an account of an indigenous primary school in the Bombay Presidency which belongs, of course, to a later date but gives a similar picture.¹ ‘The ordinary daily routine of a Hindu indigenous school is nearly the same in all parts of the Presidency. Each morning at about six o'clock the Pantoji, who is in some cases a Brāhman, and the priest of many of the families whose children attend the school, goes round the village and collects his pupils. This process usually occupies some time. At one house the pupil has to be persuaded to come to school; at another the parents have some special instructions to give the master regarding the refractoriness of their son; at a third he is asked to administer chastisement on the spot. As soon as he has collected a sufficient number of his pupils he takes them to the school. For the first half-hour a *Bhupali*, or invocation to the sun, Saraswatī, Ganapati, or some other deity, is chanted by the whole school. After this the boys who can write trace the letters of their *kittas*, or copy slips, with a dry pen, the object of this exercise being to give free play to the fingers and wrist, and to accustom them to the sweep of the letters. When the tracing lesson is over, the boys begin to write copies; and the youngest children, who have been hitherto merely looking on, are taken in hand either by the master's son or by one of the elder pupils. The master himself generally confines his attention to one or two of the oldest pupils, and to those whose instruction he has stipulated to finish within a given time. All the pupils are seated in one small room or verandah, and the confusion of sounds, which arises from three or four sets of boys reading and shouting out their tables all at the same moment, almost baffles description.'