Rahul Sagar Intro (द्रष्टुं नोद्यम्)
This report was by W. B. Addis, a shoemaker turned missionary schoolmaster, who managed the influential Nagercoil Seminary in 1827-30
I am grateful to Nidhi Shukla for helping me with the transcription. In spite of our best efforts, there are a few words that are no longer legible.
It now becomes clear that A. D. Campbell’s 1834 prominent “On The State of Education of the Natives in Southern India”, which is generally considered the earliest English account we have of “native schools” in the South, was actually based on Addis’ report on Travancore..
Crucially, the report reveals that education was more available and organized in Native States than is generally acknowledged
The want of education in Native States owed less to neglect or conservatism, and more to poor finances, which had been decimated by colonial war
विश्वास-टिप्पनी
He’s describing karNATaka education - apparent from words (baLapa) and communities (lingayats)
Dear Sir,
On Education in India
We return you our best thanks for the papers you have been so good as to send us on the subject of native schools.
The general want of education among the great body of native inhabitants, is so urgent, and its effects so prejudicial, that we have derived the greatest satisfaction from the attention that has been excited, and the enquiries made, from this important matter. Most ardently so we hope that it may lead to the adoption of such measures as shall greatly extend the present means of education among our poor Hindoo fellow subjects, and largely contribute to their moral improvement and happiness.
The education of the Hindoo youth generally commences when they are five years old. On reaching this age there is a regular form of initiation. The Master and scholars of the school to which the boy is sent are invited to the house of his parents. On this occasion the school master is the officiating priest or master of the ceremonies. The parents, scholars, and other visitors being seated in a circle an image of Ganesha is fixed in the middle and the boy to be initiated placed exactly opposite. The schoolmaster sitting down by his side after having burnt incense and presented offering to Ganesha puts a prayer into his mouth which he repeats to Ganesha entreating him to give him wisdom and make him a learned man. He then guides the boy to write with his finger in rice the mystic name of the deity, a Om, the Indian triad which expresses the three in one. At the close of the ceremonies the schoolmaster receives a present from the parents according to their ability and each of the scholars is given a small quantity of split pulse [and given?] leave to spend the rest of the day in play. The boy is now regularly initiated and the next morning commences the great work of his education. The ceremony is repeated with a little variation every time a boy enters a new class and when leaving school another grand feast is made and large presents given to the master.
Some of the children continue at school only five years-the parents through poverty or other circumstances being obliged to take them away and consequently in such cases the merest smattering of an education is obtained but in other instances where the parents are opulent and take a lively interest in the mental culture of their children. Boys not infrequently continue at school fourteen and fifteen years after which period they are supposed to be thoroughly grounded and well versed in all the departments of Hindoo literature that is as far as existing facilities in the institution will allow.
The mode of education and the internal routine of duty for each day will be found with very few exceptions and little variation the same in all schools consequently when we have seen the manner in which one is conducted it is the same as if we had seen all, and the system is the same one as it was same several centuries back. The hour generally, for opening school is six o’ clock. The first boy who enters has the name of Saraswati written upon the palm of his hand as a sign of honor and on the hand of the second a cipher is written to show that he is worthy neither of praise nor censure. The third boy gets a stripe; the fourth two and every boy that comes after an additional one so that he who comes after thirty eight are present receive forty stripes.
When the whole are assembled the boys according to their number and attainments are divided into several classes-the lower ones of which are placed partly under the care of monitors while the higher ones are more immediately under the superintendence of the master who at the same time has his eye more or less upon the whole school. The number of classes is generally four, and a boy rises from one to the other according to his capacity and progress.
The first business of a child on entering is to obtain a knowledge of artificial signs to which he learns by writing with his finger on the ground in sand and not by pronouncing the alphabet as among European and other nations. When he becomes pretty dextrous with his finger in sand he has then the privilege of writing then with an iron style on Cadjan leaves-a reed or paper of the leaves of Aristolochia Indica or with a kind of pencil on the Hulligi or Kadala which answer the purpose of slates. The two latter in these districts are the most common. One of them is a common oblong board about a feet in width and three feet in length. This board when planed smooth has only to be smeared with a little rice and pulverized charcoal and it is then fit for use. The other is made of cloth first stiffened with rice water doubled into folds resembling a book and is then covered with a composition of charcoal and various gums. The writing on either of these may be effaced by a wet cloth. The pencil used is called Bultapa, a kind of white clay substance somewhat resembling a crayon, with the exception of being rather harder.
Having attained a thorough knowledge of the letters the boy next learns to write the compounds or the manner of embodying the symbols of the vowels and the consonants and the formation of syllables, [and then the] names of villages, animals. He then commits to memory an addition table from one to hundred. He afterwards writes easy sums in addition and subtraction of money; multiplication and then reduction of money, measures, etc. Here great pains are taken with the boy in teaching him the fractions of an integer which descend not by tens as in decimal fractions, but by fours and are carried to a great extent. In order that these fractions together with the arithmetical tables in addition, multiplication, and those on the three field measures of capacity weight and extent may be rendered quite familiar to the minds of the scholars they are made to stand up twice a day in rows and repeat the whole after one of the monitors.
The other parts of a native education consists in deciphering various kinds of handwriting in public and other letters which the schoolmaster collects from various sources[,] writing common letters, drawing up forms of agreement, reading fables and legendary tales and committing various lines of poetry to memory from Sanskrit and other authors chiefly with a view to attain distinctiveness and clearness in pronunciation together with readiness and correctness in reading any kind of composition.
The three books which are most common in all the schools and which are used indiscriminately by the several castes are the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and the Bhagavad Gita but the children of the manufacturing class of people have in addition to the above, books peculiar to their own religious tenets like the Vishwakarma Purana […] and the Lingama people such as Basavapurana..Anubhava Mantapa.. Channabasavapurana. All the above works are considered and studied with a view of subserving their religious creeds.
The lighter kinds of stories which are read for amusement are generally the Panchatantra, Vetala Panchavimshati.. The two books of a purely educational kind are the several [dictionaries and grammars] such as.. But these and similar books which are most essential and without which no accurate or extensive knowledge of the languages can be attained are, from the general poverty of the masters, of all books the most uncommon in the native schools, and what those seen among them are in consequence of the ignorance, carelessness and indolence of copyists in general and full of blunders and in every way most incorrect and imperfect.
In addition to the great paucity and scarcity of books another glaring defect in the native education of the present day is the almost several absence of translations in prose to those moral parts of their poets and several elementary works which they are in the habit of committing to memory; so that you may often find a boy who may repeat verbatim a vast number of verses of theirs, [the] reasoning of which he knows no more than a parrot that has been taught to utter certain sounds. Therefore from these studies in which he has spent many a day of laborious but fruitless toil he gains no improvement whatever and makes no addition to his stock of useful knowledge. The consequence is that such boys leaving school and growing up into life meet with hundreds and thousands of Sanskrit and uncommon words in the course of their reading of the meaning of which they can form not even the most distant conjecture. And as to the declension of a noun or the conjugation of a verb they know no more than working the most abstruse problem in Euclid. Nor it is to be wondered at, with such a scanty education, that in drawing up a simple account or writing in common letter to their friends orthographical errors and other violations of grammar should be met in almost every line.
Another circumstance which contributes materially to the imperfection of native education is the general poverty of the parents. For were books of a right kind plentiful and the Master every way adequate to the task imposed upon him, he would make no advance from one class to another only as he might be paid for his labour. While learning the first rudiments it is common to give a quarter of a rupee per mensem and when arrived as far as writing on paper and the higher branches of arithmetic the master receives half a rupee. But in proceeding farther such as interpreting the poets giving the meaning of Sanskrit words and explaining the principles or science of their vernacular language such demands are made as could not come within the [means?] or the circumstances of the parents and there is therefore no alternative but that of leaving their children to grow up ignorant of the most essential and useful parts of a liberal education. Such is the present state of the native schools. But there are multitudes who cannot even avail themselves of the advantages of this system as it is.
From various enquiries we have made we cannot learn that by any former governments any general provision has ever been made in the gift of lands or in any other way for the support of schools or for the furtherance of education among their subjects. Among some of the most enlightened of them, indeed, literature was encouraged by liberal rewards and honorary distinctions, which although ineffectual as to the universal introduction of knowledge among the mass of the people, advanced the interests of learning generally. These however have fallen with the governments which supported them, and perhaps no period in the history of India can be pointed out when a greater ignorance, than that now prevailing, overspread the land.
The very great poverty which exists among the middling and lower classes of the people has a great and distressing influence in opposing the measures which might be adopted to remedy an evil so extensive. The greater part of these classes are unable to defray the expenses incident upon the education of their children. While their necessities requiring the assistance of their children are as soon as their tender limbs are capable of the smallest labour, they are unable to allow to their education the required time. In consequence of these causes in very many villages where formerly there were schools there are now none and in many others where there are large schools now only a few of the children of the most opulent are taught, others being unable from poverty to what is demanded. There are numerous school masters out of employ and many others have been obliged to [seek?] a living in some other way. Not a few also of those now employed in education, in consequence of the little encouragement they have met within their profession, have taken but little pains to qualify themselves for it and are taking still less to qualify their sons to succeed them[;] indeed many endeavour to obtain for them other employments.
From this it will appear that a very large part of the population of this country is entirely without the means of obtaining any education. In many places this appears to be deeply felt and deplored and has been the occasion of numerous and very pressing applications to us for the establishment of charity schools both far and near; so a few of these in the vicinity we have allowed and have established schools which are supported and superintended by the mission but our limited means puts it out of our power to do anything that can at all meet the exigencies of the people around us.
From this view of the present state of education among the Hindoos in this part of the country it appears exceedingly desirable and indeed necessary that some effectual means should be adopted to afford to the native subjects of Great Britain in this country the blessings of education. If these are not adopted, the evils at present deplored will increasingly augment; the absence of a general education among the present generation will lead to its more universal abandonment by the next, until a degree of ignorance and degeneracy will ensue which cannot be anticipated without the liveliest alarm and regret… [..]
Rev. William Bawn Addis
Nagercoil
November 1828