Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c13.14

c13.14

While speaking of the schools and colleges as centres of instruction, we should not allow our attention to be engrossed by them and them alone. We should take note of the unobtrusive but useful educational works done by the unconventional *domestic system of teaching*. It made the house of a learned man a centre of instruction, which sometimes supplied the students with both board and lodging. Thus to quote a single instance, we find the author of the *Tārīkh-i-Ṭāhirī* studying in the house of his preceptor Maulānā Isḥāq, and perusing Sa’dī, Jāmī, Khāqānī and Anwarī.¹ Such educational centres, small but numerous, not only provided a field for post-collegiate studies, but were also in many cases the only means by which instruction in some subjects was imparted. The schools and colleges did not generally provide for such a training; it was for this reason that we find a learner of music or painting, for instance, taking his lessons from his chosen *ustād* in the latter's house. The technical education was diffused by the system of apprenticeship. We notice, in the provision made by Fīrūz Tughlaq for the technical education of the slaves he brought up, that they were placed under master-craftsmen in their shops or manufactories, to learn the different arts.