There was no class instruction, as in our schools reducing
all intellects to the same level and retarding the industrious for
the sake of the dullard. But recitations in Sanskrit and the
system of repeating lessons in chorus on the dispersion of the
school encouraged such emulation as may be necessary, whilst
the separate instruction of the pupil and his devotion to his work
during the time that he was not reading with his tutor
stimulated those habits of reflection and of private study, in
which the students of present day schools are sadly deficient.
Then again when the student grew older, he travelled to learn
philosophy under one tutor, and law under another, much in the
same way as students of German Universities visit various seats
of learning in order to hear, say, international law at Heidelberg,
the Pandects at Berlin.
It would not be without interest to point out that from the
humblest beginnings in education up to the highest courses in
Hindu metaphysics and science great wisdom was displayed.
Traces of the ‘Kindergarten system’ are still found. The simplest
methods for arresting and keeping attention were resorted to and
the moral and mental capacities of children, according to their
spheres of life, were everywhere carefully studied and cultivated.
As for the mode of instruction, it also bore in every one of its
features the emphatically practical as well as ideal aim of the
Hindu legislator.
That the above statement is not an unsupported assertion,
I will quote a paragraph from the first educational despatch of
the Court of Directors which was issued on the 3rd June 1814.
The Directors point out that ‘the indigenous village schools
are a part of the village system and that they have formed a
model to schools in England.’ Again they point out ‘this
venerable and benevolent institution of the Hindus is
represented to have withstood the shock of revolutions, and to
its operation is ascribed the general intelligence of the native.’
In 1848 the Government of the Punjab passed into the
hands of the East India Company. The first Board of
Administration in the Punjab recognised the full value of the rich
educational legacy, which they inherited from the decaying and
disintegrating Sikh constitution. Recognising the widespread
character of the indigenous education, and the necessity of
keeping up old educational traditions alive, Sir John and Sir
Henry Lawrence defined their policy in matters of education in
the following words:—