[INDOLOGY] Sanskrit in India

[Dominik Wujastyk]

​There are some amazing colonial reports about such rural education​
institutions. The most famous and striking is *Adam's Reports*:

@Book{adam-adam,
  author =    {William Adam},
  editor =    {J. Long},
  title =     {Adam's Reports on Vernacular Education in {Bengal} and
{Behar}, Submitted to {Government} in 1835, 1836 and 1838, With a Brief
View of its Past and Present Condition by \ldots\ J. Long},
  year =      {1868},
  publisher = {Home Secretariat Press},
  address =   {Calcutta},
  timestamp = {2010.03.16},
  url = {https://archive.org/details/adamsreportsonve00adam}
}

​@Book{leit-hist,
  author =    {Leitner, Gottlieb William},
  title =     {History of Indigenous Education in the {Panjab} Since
Annexation and in 1882},
  year =      {1982},
  publisher = {Amar Prakashan},
  address =   {Delhi},
  location =  {Oxford},
  note =      {First Published in Calcutta: Government printing, 1882.},
  timestamp = {2010.03.16}
}​

​Reading these reports, I first realized the sheer scale of the traditional
educational establishment in India ​that the British Indian government
dismantled through the dissolution of Trusts and the redirection of
taxation to Calcutta.  After destroying the village-level education system,
they worked on the principle that apex educational institutions in Calcutta
would have a trickle-down effect, seeding new institutions across Bengal,
the Panjab and beyond.  We all know how well that worked.   Adam's reports
in particular make very sad reading.  Adam pleaded for the protection and
strengthening of indigenous education, and gave excellent reasons for doing
so.  But Adam's enlightened recommendations were swept aside by the
benighted policies Macaulay and Bentinck.

--
Professor Dominik Wujastyk* <http://ualberta.Academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>
Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
Department of History and Classics <http://historyandclassics.ualberta.ca/>
University of Alberta, Canada


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