Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c17.124

c17.124

The boys were first taught the Persian alphabet along with accents and marks of punctuation. As soon as this was mastered, which did not take more than two days, they were taught the combinations of two letters. After a week, they had to read short lines of prose or verse containing religious or moral sentiment, in which those combinations frequently occurred. They must strive to read these themselves with occasional assistance from the tutor. Then, for a few days, the master proceeded with teaching a new hemistich, and in a very short time, the boys could read with fluency. The teacher gave the young students four exercises daily, viz. the alphabet, the combinations, a new hemistich or distich, and repetition of what they had read before. This method proved very successful, so that what usually took them years was now accomplished in a few months. The sciences were taught in the following order:— morality, arithmetic, accounts, agriculture, geometry, longimetry, astronomy, geomancy, economics, the