concerning education in Bengal prior to the British occupation,
asserts that there were then 80,000 schools in Bengal, or one for
every 400 of the population. Ludlow, in his History of British
India, says that “in every village, which has retained its old form,
I am assured that the children generally are able to read, write
and cipher; but where we have swept away the village system,
there the village school has also disappeared.”’ (Cp. B.D. Basu,
Education in India under the E.1. Co., p18).
In Bombay, which came under British rule after the fall of
the Peshwas in 1818, a Report of the Bombay Education Society
for 1819 observes:— ‘There is probably as great a proportion of
persons in India who can read, write, and keep simple accounts,
as are to be found in European countries.’ The same Report for
the following year notes:— ‘Schools are frequent among the na-
tives, and abound everywhere.’ In April, 1821, Mr Prendergast,
member of the Executive Council of the then Government of
Bombay, notes in a Minute on an application for 2 English
schools in Thana or Panwell Talukas:— ‘I need hardly mention
what every member of the Board knows as well as I do that there
is hardly a village, great or small, throughout our territories, in
which there is not at least one school, and in larger villages
more; many in every town and in large cities in every division
where young natives are taught reading, writing and arithmetic,
upon a system so economical, from a handful or two of grain, to
perhaps a rupee per month to the schoolmaster, according to the
ability of the parents, and at the same time so simple and
effectual, that there is hardly a cultivator or petty dealer who is
not competent to keep his own accounts with a degree of
accuracy, in my opinion, beyond what we meet with among the
lower orders in our own country; whilst the more splendid
dealers and bankers keep their books with a degree of ease,
conciseness, and clearness I rather think fully equal to those of
any British merchants.’ (Cp. Commons Report, 1832, p.468).
I shall come to Madras in a moment, and revert to
statistical proof such as I can find,—thereafter. Let me here refer
you to the classic case of Dr Leitner’s Report on the system of
Indigenous Education in the Punjab, based on an investigation
carried out by the learned Doctor,—principal of a Government
College, because of a surprising difference between his figures of
the people educated in indigenous schools, and those supplied
by the Director of Public Instruction for the province, to the
Indian Education Committee of 1882. Dr Leitner remarks, in his