Education is a process that begins at birth and continues until the end of life. This chapter traces how education evolved in India – from the Gurukula system and the great Jaina and Buddhist centres, through temples, mutts, Maktabs and Madrasas in the medieval period, to English education under the Company and the Crown, the work of Christian missionaries, and the commissions and achievements of independent India.
1. Education in Ancient India
- Daughters as well as sons of the priestly and warrior classes had access to education.
- Pupils were taught in ashramas and hermitages to memorise Vedic hymns and learn Sanskrit grammar, prose and verse, logic and metaphysics, as well as astronomy, mathematics, medicine and astrology. This tradition was the Gurukula system.
- Sangam literature refers to learned women – Aadhimanthiyar, Avvaiyar and forty other poetesses.
- Scripts on potsherds excavated at Keeladi (Sivagangai district) show a high literacy level as early as the 6th century BCE.
- In Purananuru (183), Ariyapadai Kadandha Nedunchezhiyan urged everyone to learn from the teacher irrespective of poverty: even a mother favours the learned child, and a ruler follows the learned.
- The Upanishads marked a radical departure from Vedic beliefs. Upa-ni-shad means 'to sit down near one' – wisdom learned at the feet of a sage.
- The French traveller Bernier described the Gurukula system in Varanasi: masters taught in private houses and gardens of rich merchants, the most eminent having twelve disciples; teachers lived on dakshinas (customary gifts).