Ancient Indian Education: An Inquiry into its Origin, Development, and Ideals c8.53

c8.53

The oldest known inscriptions in India are those of King Aśoka, who reigned from 272 to 231 B.C. This monarch had erected in various parts of India edicts and inscriptions on rocks and pillars, many of which have been discovered. His chief object was to promote amongst his people *Dharma* or moral duty. These inscriptions are in the vernacular. Aśoka also erected many monasteries. The existence of these edicts in the vernacular has been taken to imply that there was a widespread popular education going on in India at the time of Aśoka. Thus Mr. V. A. Smith says ¹ that the care taken to publish the imperial edicts implies that a knowledge of reading and writing was widely diffused, and that there is the same inference from the inscriptions being in the vernacular. He says also that it is probable that learning was fostered by the numerous monasteries, and that boys and girls in hundreds of villages learned their lessons from the monks and nuns, as they do now in Burma, and that it is likely that the percentage of literacy among the Buddhist population in Aśoka’s time was higher than it is now in many parts of British India. The vernacular inscriptions of Aśoka certainly seem to imply that there was a considerable amount of literacy, but what proportion of the population could read and write it seems quite impossible to conjecture. Even if only a few possessed these accomplishments it might have seemed quite worth while to Aśoka to erect his monuments and have inscriptions put on them, for the few could read them to the many. But it is very doubtful whether the Buddhist monasteries had become as early as this centres of a widespread popular instruction, and it is not certain that they ever became such in India. There is, however, evidence, as we have seen above, that before the time of Aśoka facilities of some kind existed for giving elementary instruction, and the welding together of a large part of India into one empire, under the strong rule of the Mauryan sovereigns, must have given increased opportunities for trade and commerce, and this may have also led to an increased demand for popular schools where the three R’s could be learnt.