In recent times, a lot of curiosity among a few Indians has been kindled over the topic of education in India over the last two or three millennia. While the school texts in India do not dwell on this topic, there are many books that attempt to trace the history of education in India and how is declined to a low state after the British rule. One such book is by an author Sahana Singh named as “The Educational heritage of Ancient India – how an ecosystem of learning was laid to waste”. I will urge each of you to read this book and what I have given below is an abridged extract of this book to kindle some level of interest in this wonderful book. I have made very minor additions here and there but the write-up broadly takes the words of the book itself. Enjoy

Brief kist of Ancient Indian Universities

Takshashila (near Rawalpindi)
Nalanda (Bihar)
Valabhi (Gujarat)
Vikramshila (Bihar)
Pushpagiri (Odisha)
Jagaddala (Bangladesh)
Varanasi (UP)
Odantapuri (Bihar)
Sharada Peetha (Kashmir)
Bikrampur (Bangladesh)
Ratnagiri (Odisha)
Mithila (Bihar)
Ujjaini (MP)
Kanchipuram (TN)

1. Takshashila – established before 6th Century BCE and city was overrun by Huns in 455 CE. Chanakya (author of Arthashastra or Economics), Charaka and Jivaka (Ayurveda) associated with this institution. Focus was the Vedas and 18 other Arts including medicine, law and military branches. Among other things, there is a record of Jivaka having performed a surgery when a merchant complaining of severe head pain in was tied to his bed, cut through the skin of the head, drawing flesh out from each side of the incision and pulling two worms out of the wound, closing the wound and sticking and discharging the patient. He also is credited with solving a case of twisted intestines.
2. Much about Nalanda is known from Chinese writers in 7th Century CE. It was said to have held 100 lectures daily and no student wanted to miss any of these. Entrance was tough and only 20% used to get through and there are numerous coaching classes to prepare kids for the entrance. It had 1500 teachers and 8500 students. Kids used to gain entry around the age of 20 and students passing out of this university used to be seen as the cream of society. Inspired by Nalanda, four other Universities were set up in Bihar itself. They all worked in collaboration with each other. Huien Tsang studied there for 5 years and then went to Kanchi where they met monks from Ceylon who had come there to study. When he asked whether he should visit Ceylon also to learn, he was told that there are no brilliant minds outside Nalanda.
3. The beauty and grandeur of Nalanda has been richly described by many. Logic and debate were intrinsic part of education. Tarka Vadya is the art of logic and debate and Vaada Vidya being the art of discussion was taught to all students. Terminology of debate is interesting – साध्य (thesis to be established), सिद्धान्त (hypothesis to be proven), हेतु (reason), उधारण (example), साधर्म्य (affirmative example), वैधर्म्य (negative example), प्रतक्ष्य (perceptive inference), अनुमान (inference) and प्रमाण (proof). Further rules were framed that the topic of debate must be useful, it must be done in front of scholars, rules for victory or loss, one must not discard dignity or use disrespectful भाषा, must be fearless and need to use voice modulation, among others. Intellectual tournaments were organized on a regular basis and rewards given to victors. There were 9 storied libraries in Nalanda. This was destroyed by Khilji and the place burned for days since so many books were destroyed.
4. Ujjaini stands out for academic output in astronomy and mathematics. It was equipped with an elaborate observatory and stood on the zero meridian of longitude on those times. Brahmagupta was the greatest mathematician of this university who continued the tradition of Varahamihira. He worked on trignometrical formulae, quadratic equations, area of cyclic quadrilateral, arithmetic progression and improved on Aryabhatta’s Sine tables. He was first to treat zero on its own right and his works later reached Arabs from where it went  Europe. Later came Bhaskara 2 whose book reached an understanding of the number systems and solving equations which was achieved in Europe only after several centuries. He was the first to write a work with full and systematic use of decimal number system and also seen as the founder of differential calculus.
5. India was called by the name Yin-Tu by the Chinese which means moon. As per them, the world is steeped in darkness and India is the land of knowledge providing light in this era of darkness. It was common in that era for kids to move across the land for study in Universities – people from North studying in Kanchi and from South studying and teaching in Bihar was quite common. There is a story of a father from Varanasi who sent his kids to Gujarat even though Nalanda was close by since “Campus placement” from Valabhi in Gujarat was seen as better.
6. Funding approach was interesting. For Nalanda, hundred villages around Nalanda took upon itself to fund the teacher and students studying there. At other places, good performance in entrance created scholarship opportunities or students used to take up menial tasks for college or people in the village to fund themselves for study. Teachers thus could devote themselves full time to study and not worry about income at all. Once a kid graduates, he was given a degree in front of the entire family and other students and teachers – it was a public ceremony and that following verses from Taittriya Upanishad were chanted –
7. Never deviate from सत्य
   Never deviate from धर्म
   Never neglect your well being
   Never neglect your health
   Never neglect worldly activities
   Never neglect self study and teaching others
   Treat your mother as देव
   Treat your father as देव
   Treat your teacher as देव
   Treat your guest as देव
8. Temples also served as universities especially in the South. The cost per student and cost of teacher was known. There was a well established ecosystem where the neighbouring villages took on the responsibility of funding these schools which included the cost of hostels and living accommodation for all. Costs varied for primary education vis a vis advanced college. Colleges also were attached to hospitals and hostels. One hospital is described to have 15 beds, a physician, a surgeon, two errand boys and two nurses and a fully stocked pharmacy. Students were meant to be disciplined and there were punishments prescribed for students bearing arms, using filthy language and wounding classmates.
9. In today’s POK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) was the most famous Sharada Peetha. Such was it’s reputation that even Ramanuja and Adi Shankara from down South could to be acknowledged as Jagadguru only after Sharada Peeth certified their worth. It had a huge library and people not just from India but also Tibet, China, etc came here to study. In turn, scholars from here were in demand all over the country and beyond.
10. Kerala school of Mathematics was the most recent university located at Thrissur in Kerala. They discovered the Infinite series which laid the foundation for Calculus much before Newton. It is established that Jesuit scholars took the books from here to Europe and their Latin translations formed the basis for growth of Mathematics in Europe. The people were rebelled in their love for pure mathematics and people from all castes have passed out of this place.
11. Beyond Vedas and Vedanta, colleges focussed on various other branches of study and were open for people of all castes. Medicine, Military science and other artisan skills were taught at these places. Medicine involved study of 8 limbs – Internal medicine, Surgery, Ear-Nose-Eye, Gynaecology, Obstetrics and Paediatrics, Psychology, Toxicology, Rejuvenation and Virilization. It appears to have been a 8-year course at the end of which the equivalent of Hippocratic oath articulated in the Charaka Samhita was administered.
12. Other subjects included music, dance and sculpture, agricultural sciences, metallurgy, architecture, charioteering, stone working, leather working, carpentry, ship building and rope making. Within Arts, we had specializations in Linguistics, pedagogics and humour. Women also seemed to be involved in study as the history notes many woman scholars in many of these fields. Chinese in particular were active seekers and while many used to come here, many Indians used to teach full time for many years in China. Lot of translations of Indian books are available in China. In the 8th century CE, there is a record of one Indian, Gautama Siddha who became the president of official board of Astronomy in China.
13. A Persian by the name Bazzouyeh came to India around 531 CE and translated medical texts, called them as Hindu medicine and took many herbs from here to Persia. Concepts of Rishi Kanada in 6th Century BCE were taken by Democritus who in turn had a student Hippocrates who is considered the father of Western medicine. Materia Medica written in 50 CE was a text used in Europe for around 16 centuries and contains a very large number of Indian herbs. The fifth Abbasid Caliph Haroun Al Rashid had an Indian physician Manka who translated the most ancient medical texts Sushruta Samhita into Persian and many Islamic scholars acknowledged their borrowings from India on fields of medicine, music, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy and Chemistry. While Islamic scholars attributed their knowledge to Indian sources, the Europeans who in turn fully copied texts from Islamic sources removed the attribution and wrote these texts as their original works.
14. Minhaj-i-Siraj, who chronicled the lives of the Sultans says – “there were a great number of books there (in Nalanda) and when all these books came under the observation of Muslims, they summoned a number of Hindus that might give them information of the books and then all the Hindus who were aware of these texts were killed“. It was mindless destruction and killing – at Nalanda followed by Vikramshila and Odantapuri by Khilji. India had never seen or imagined such a scale of destruction in its past. Over the years many other Universities such as Jagaddala, Somapura, Valabhi, Kashmir and others were destroyed. As the news spread, scholars abandoned their colleges even before invaders attacked – many scholars ran and settled in South.
15. In Banaras, several hundreds of temples were destroyed by Qutubuddin Aibak in the 12th century CE. Many scholars also migrated to Tibet which was another centre of learning and records exist at Tibet that highlight the extent of damage being done in India to universities. Progress of scholarship waned significantly post these destructions. Talking about the 325 years of the rule of Sultans, a historian writes – Not only were Hindus deprived of their position as rulers, ministers, governors or commanders of troops, they were also treated contemptuously. The Turkish Sultans and their followers sought their brides from well to do Hindu families by compelling them to part with their daughters. And then these girls were converted to Islam and married off.
16. Many scholars who escaped tried to rebuild the Universities by trying to regroup but their efforts could not succeed. Over time, people began to forget earlier works and achievements and thus were unable to build on previous knowledge. And in turn the plagiarized works which traced their origin to Indian books became their source of knowledge in India.
17. The Sultans developed Islamic schools of learning meant only for Muslims were Quran and Islamic Law was taught in Arabic. Persian was also the medium of education and limited training was given in agriculture, accountancy, astrology, astronomy, history, geography and mathematics to the extent required to run the state. As for Hindus, they became deprived of higher education and even primary education was possible only where villages were able to run schools as long as they were able to escape unjust taxation. To avoid Jaziya tax and to get positions of power, many Hindus converted to Islam. And to retain identities and preserve traditions, caste identity deepened significantly during this period.
18. Things began to improve slightly in Akbar’s reign. Said Akbar – “everybody ought to read books on morals, arithmetic, notation peculiar to arithmetic, agriculture, mensuration, geometry astronomy, face reading, household matters, rules of government, medicine, logic, natural science, higher mathematics, metaphysics and theology“. Hindus and Muslims were encouraged to study next to each other in Madarasas and some continuity came about during this time. This mixture of students lead of merger of language of Hindustani, Arabic and Persian and thus came about a new language of today’s Urdu and Hindi. This joint education continued during the reign of Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Then things changed again under Aurangzeb.
19. Aurangzeb built many Maktabs and Madarasas over the ruins of destroyed temples. When he heard that Brahmins of Thatta, Multan, Sindh and Varanasi were attracting Muslims to their discourses, he ordered all their temples and schools to be destroyed. He killed his brother Dara Shikoh who was a Sanskrit scholar himself. Had Dara been the emperor of India, Indian history may have been different.
20. Koenraad Elst points out in his writings that the entire period of Muslim rule was that of continuous war of occupiers against resisters. Inorder to stop this state of continuous war, the rulers resorted to a compromise which the Hanafite school of Islamic Law made possible where instead of two options given to non-Muslims viz death or conversion, a third option was to tolerate them as Dhimmis which meant living under 20 humiliating conditions and collect Jizya or toleration tax from them. Akbar cancelled these humiliating conditions which Hindus at other times tolerated this state. But thanks to Hanafite Law, many Muslim kings considered themsleves as exempt from their duty of continuing their genocide on Hindus. Equally, there were wars between Turkish and Afghani rulers and they had to ally themselves with local people and over time, the original chaos became relaxed since the rulers made a lot of money through Jizya tax on Hindus and the need to kill was kept aside.
21. Mughals thus neglected sciences significantly and did not create an enabling ecosystem whereby the earlier sciences developed by Hindus could be deepened. When Portuguese presented printed papers to Akbar, he was least interested in the possibilities of printing press and Jahangir too was indifferent to a mechanical clock presented to him by the French delegation. And while Mughals were aware of telescopes, pumps, various mechanical gadgets and wheelbarrows, this did not excite them for indigenous adaptation.
22. The Brits started establishing colleges to get a supply of people for judicial administration. Maccaulay’s famous memorandum in 1835 gave arguments towards establishing English education to people. His memo said that Brits must work to develop interpreters between them and crores of people whom they are governing. A class of persons must be developed who will be Indian in blood and colour but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. Then this class of interpreters may refine the Vernacular languages with the refined idioms of science borrowed from Western nomenclature and Brits must give degrees to make them fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to vast masses of the population.
23. Two schools of thoughts – Orientalists and Anglicists fought with one another in terms of how Indians must be taught. While former wanted English works to be translated in Vernacular, the latter wanted English only as the basis. Anglicists felt that if local works are taught to kids, the Muslims will see Brits as usurping foreigners while Hindus will see Brits as unclean beasts. But Brits need to be seen as friends and patrons and powerful beneficient persons. Thus, if Muslims and Hindus are taught about their past in their own languages, they will never enlist themselves in the army and civil services. So Brits should teach Sepoys at elementary level while elites must be exposed to English literature. And once elites become familiar with literature, they will look down upon the works of Brahmins. They will thus cling to the Brits and actually worry if a native empire will gain strength since the worse aspects of native past will destroy their own lives.
24. And there were those Europeans who wanted Arabic and Persian to be set aside and prominence given to local languages. The term ‘vernacular’ acquired a derogatory meaning during this time. Of course, there were severe efforts to convert the natives into Christianity. Maccaulay himself wrote to his father that no Hindu will remain a Hindu once he acquaints himself with English education. Many missionaries learnt the local languages to translate Bible and use this for evangelical purposes. The arguments made by them is that locals themselves wanted to learn English and quoted Rammohan Roy who himself became an Anglicist and argued strongly that we must set aside the 2000 year old Sanskrit language thus avoiding wasting peoples’ time reading an outdated language. And with more printing happening in English books on science, the natives could never even imagine that any works on science and mathematics were even available in local languages ever in the past. (and this is our state even today).
25. While India was embroiled in education debate, England itself was languishing in illiteracy. In England, a miniscule people went for elite education while public schooling of the scale happening in India was unknown. Thomas Munro writes in 1830s that there were 100000 public schools in Bengal and Bihar alone. William Adams writes that he did not recollect studying in his village school in Scotland anything that has more direct bearing upon daily life than what was taught in a humbler school in Bengal. And surprisingly, people from all castes were studying in these schools across the country. Girls were mostly home schooled though in Malabar, up-to 30% students were girls. Some collectors furnished data about poor Brahmins who taught all their life with no expectations on compensation.
26. Campbell applauded the economical methods of teaching in Indian schools and the system of more advanced scholars teaching the less advanced thereby confirming their own knowledge. This Madras Method of teaching was then introduced by Reverend Andrew Bell in England where he found the Indian method of teaching very effective. By 1821, 300000 Brit kids were being educated under Dr Bell’s principles and his ideas were adopted in Europe, West Indies and even in Colombia.
27. Meanwhile, as Brit rule deepened, our Beautiful Tree was killed by uprooting its roots. As villages started getting taxed by the bloodthirsty collectors, the villages were no longer able to self fund their education. Within a span of a decade, by 1850s, Indians across the country became illiterate. A Brit collector wrote that degeneration of education was attributable to the transfer of capital of India from Indians to the Europeans and restricting it by law from employing even temporarily in India. And local manufacturing has been greatly diminished by introduction of European manufacturing. Even the temples were not spared and were forced to part with donations but no money given for their own upkeep. The Brit education policies sounded the death knell for regional languages as rush for English medium intensified and mother tongue became a second language. Over time, even the quality of local literature diminished and illiteracy and low self confidence began to be associated with the absence of English proficiency. In this context, Gandhi made a statement in 1931 that English rule left India more illiterate that what it was a hundred years ago.
28. We will conclude here. Even today, India’s self-gaze is through alien eyes. The past heritage lies buried in regional and Sanskrit literature awaiting illumination. When India became independent, there was a fresh opportunity to write a new chapter on decolonization – India is still waiting.

Education of women
1. In the Vedic as well as post-Vedic era, Upanayana was performed for women too. Husband and wife need to perform Yagnas jointly and many Shlokas were meant to be recited by wives only. Some Yagnas were meant to performed by women only without the presence of men. In Ramayana, Kaushalya is referred to as मंत्रविद्, meaning an expert in मंत्र of the वेद. Women teachers were called as उपाध्याया. In the marriage ceremony, one hymn states that wife must shine as a good speaker in assemblies. While most women post marriage would settle down in domestic duties, some women called as Brahmavadinis would marry late after devoting more years to study or not marry at all.

2. In some plays, the story line indicates that co-education was in vogue during the time of the play viz 8th century CE. One can see women debating with men aggressively with authority (गार्गी in बृहद् अरणयक). In the most famous debate between आदि शंकर and मंडनमिश्र, the latter’s wife उभय भारती played the role of the judge. In the Mauryan period, there was a class of super talented women called as गणिक (who became Geishas in Japan) who were highly respected for their knowledge. They were not required to marry and had freedom to choose their lovers. These ladies were called as नित्य सुमण्गळि and their presence was considered auspicious in marriages. गणिक were government servants and received salaries and were used by kings for espionage, diplomacy and other key State functions. List of arts listed which गणिक’s excelled in are listed in the कामसूत्र available in the link below:

https://adhyatmawritings.com/2015/03/20/kamasutra-कामसूत्र-64-arts/

3. While in later years, we do find accounts of position of women getting degraded, we find mention of scholarship of women continuing too. Thus, a book of poems compiled in 1st Century CE, गाथा सप्तशति features many poetesses. And you find many books across the country featuring women authors. An 8th century translation of Indian medicine in Arabic refers to a woman gynaecologist, Rusa. The famous book of Maths by भास्कराचार्य, लीलावती, was actually a book on Maths made by him for his daughter to solve. Modern invention of napkins,  household gadgets and communication devices have opened up vistas for women to spend more time outside unlike women in the past who had to be confined to homes owing to practical challenges.

4. Women in battlefields comes as a common occurrence in Kashmir as well as Southern kingdoms of Vakatakas and Chalukyas. (So if modern India has a woman as its Defence Minister, we can see that India is slowly reverting to its earlier state of mind). During the Muslim rule, the idea of seclusion of women, which was hithero unknown, began to increase and social standing of women began to decrease (not to mention safety concerns during the Muslim rule). Even the dressing style of women became conservative and limiting in order to protect them from oppressors. Basham, in his book The Wonder that was India, says that like men, women in India too were bare-breasted till the advent of Muslims into India. Even during this time, once a Hindu kingdom got established viz Vijayanagara, one again sees women poetesses and scholars debating in the kingdom of the Rayas but once they got overthrown, women again got relegated to the background. As India took to independence, we see women status in India slowly marching towards its own ancient ways which had to be abandoned owing to external invasions.

|| समाप्तम् ||