EDUCATION IN INDIA,

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY.

......Res antiquæ laudis et artis Ingredior, sanctus ausus recludere fontes.

VIRG. Georg, II. V.; 174‰

THE early history of nations teaches us that the gradual development of the human intellect, and the expansion of the human mind from which are evolved, at length, the arts and sciences in the various degrees of advancement to which the several peoples with whose rise we are acquainted have attained, are always preceded by, nay we may almost say, result from an extension and perfection of their respective systems of theology.

Before a nation can be said to be a nation, while as yet it is in embryo, whether it be in the earliest stage of all, the oikos of Aristotle, or one step in advance, the koμn of the same author, it has busied itself about something more than the mere means of subsistence. It has, in truth, a rude idea of the Deity under whatever forms and superstitions disguised; for we cannot conceive the most untutored mind so constituted as to have no innate consciousness of a superior power: we know of no people under the sun who live entirely occupied with the cares and pleasures of this

world and its inhabitants, with not one thought of religion however false, however debased. History leaves us no record of the existence of a people who lived and died without a prayer or an invocation ever on their lips; without a worship of something, let that range over a space infinitely vast, from the one true God to the material constituents of the earth itself.

A religious light of some kind, often a very dim religious light indeed, flickers in fitful flashes over the mind of every man born into the world. Where this is faintest, where this is toned down to the feeblest glimmer, there we find the grossest ignorance, and a people the least raised above the level of the brute. We need hardly refer in illustration of the above remarks to the Israelites of old with their extensive code of moral and ceremonial law, the Egyptians and the Greeks on the one hand, and to the degraded tribes of Africa on the other, since no reader of history can be ignorant of a fact so patent.

The more intricate, the more perfect and complex the system of theology, the greater will be its influence over the minds of the laity, and the greater its importance in their eyes. This consideration, arising in the beginning from a reverence and awe for what is deemed divine in its nature, gradually becomes extended to the mere ministers of religion, the priests. The clergy acquire unwonted authority, which they employ, not unnaturally, in endeavouring to widen still more the circle of their influence. Knowledge is power. The first efforts, therefore, of the teachers of the religious mysteries are directed to the preservation within their own order of the means of popular education. To effect this end, one of the most general modes adopted in all ages has been so to mix up religious and secular instruction that no layman can of himself seek the latter without intruding with unhallowed foot upon the

domains of the ecclesiastical order, whose undoubted right to instruct him in the former he has never dreamt of questioning. From this stage the people with whom in the following essay we shall have most to do seem never to have advanced. Other nations have passed through the same gradations, and have suffered the priests to become the only repositories of learning and the sole teachers of youth, not merely of necessity, as when secular learning is closely blended with religious, but out of carelessness, and as a matter of course, because they have always been so. Such was the condition of most of the nations of Europe in the Middle Ages, and such is still the condition of many yet

"smothered in the stench and fog

Of Tiber's marshes and the Papal bog."

The Hindús, however, still retain the intimate mixture of religious and secular instruction, and their priestly order solely qualified to expound the same.

It would be impossible, without giving some slight sketch of the Hindú system of theology, satisfactorily to point out the state of education in India, as taught by native teachers in modern days, and the present position of the arts and sciences, commonly so called, so closely are these bound together, and so little have the latter advanced since the time when the means of instruction in them were compiled in their sacred volumes.

A little digression may not be out of place here explanatory of our reasons for confining, as we propose to do, our present remarks to the Hindú religion. India was the birthplace of the religion of Budha, and authorities still differ as to the merits of the respective claims of these cognate systems of faith to priority on the score of antiquity. Laying aside the question of antiquity, as irrelevant to the matter in hand, the simple reason why we need take no notice of Budhism in this introductory chap

ter is that it has ceased for a very considerable time to exist in what was formerly its head-quarters.

Founded (it is popularly supposed) about 550 B. C. the religion of Budha flourished on the continent of India until the fourth and fifth centuries after Christ, when it gradually. declined, and became almost extinct. It afterwards revived for a time, and its adherents became the prevailing sect at Benares, but "they do not now exist on the plains of India1." An additional reason too (if one were wanted) for taking little notice of Budhism is that its "theology, mythology, philosophy, geography, chronology, &c. are almost entirely of the Hindú family, and all the terms used in those sciences are Sanskrit."

An outline of the Hindú religion with some mention of science and philosophy as then existent, is to be found in the sacred Védas, which are a compilation of hymns and prayers supposed to have been arranged in their present form about the fourteenth century B. C. Nothing however relating to the state of society can be relied on until about the ninth century B.C.; when a code of laws was drawn up which is called the Code of Menu. Besides this code of Menu we have the Puránas, or scriptures of the new religion, eighteen in number, said to be the works of Vyása the compiler of the Védas, but really the composition of different authors between the eighth and sixteenth centuries A. D., though frequently from materials of much more ancient date. From the code of Menu, however, we gain the best idea of the state of society and the condition of the arts and sciences at the period of its compilation, which indeed has been their condition until quite lately, so stagnant has Hindú civilisation remained.

This code, which appears to have been compiled by one

1 Elphinstone, Hist, Ind. Book II. Chap. iv,

2 Ibid.

who, while incorporating existing laws, would introduce such alterations as the prevailing opinion of wise men of the time sanctioned, strikes us at first mainly by the division of society into four classes or casts'; and the enormous preponderance in power and influence of the first over the others, with the abject degradation of the fourth.

This fourfold division of society having been now practically abolished, the Brahmins alone retaining their position, whilst the three others have been replaced by a number of unimportant casts answering generally to the trades or professions followed, it is unnecessary to do more than merely mention their existence at the time of the compilation of the code. We may therefore proceed shortly to consider the form of government set forth in the Institutes, (code of Menu) briefly noticing the administration of justice as detailed therein, and touching more at length upon the Hindoo religion; for without some knowledge of these facts it will be difficult for us to understand how the arts and sciences could have attained to so high a degree of perfection, as compared with contemporary learning, at so early a period, as we shall presently show that they did, and how, having attained to such a comparative pitch of excellence, they never advanced a step farther, but, while other nations were proceeding in the paths of progress, remained stationary; so that to this day, scarcely a scientific work in Sanskrit can be found which teaches anything more than could be learnt in the Védas and Shasters nearly three thousand years ago.

"Whether under a religious form, or under one purely secular, the penal law is the first that makes its appearance

1 Elphinstone, to whom we are indebted for the above description of cast, uses 'cast' and 'class' indiscriminately; we have preferred, for the sake of clearness, to make use of 'cast' only, although at the risk of falling into some slight inelegancies.-AUTHOR,