Education in Ancient India.

• Author: Rocher, Ludo
• Position: Book Review

Education in Ancient India. By HARTMUT SCHARFE. Handbook of Oriental Studies, sect. 2: India, vol. 16. Leiden: BRILL, 2002. Pp. 355, illus.

A statement on the back cover of this volume rightfully claims that Hartmut Scharfe has produced "a true reference work" on education in classical India, for the entire period preceding Muslim rule (with occasional excursuses into more modern times). Indeed, both the primary (Sanskrit and Pali, and, as one might expect from Scharfe, also Tamil and Malayalam) and secondary source materials (including comparisons with Zoroastrian, Greco-Roman, and other ancient civilizations, as well as studies of oral and written education generally) used to compile this book are impressive.

A general first chapter on "education as a topic," is followed by chapters on "the oral tradition," "content of the tradition--revealed and observed," "the final goal of education," and "modern apologists." From this onward the book proceeds more chronologically: "training in early childhood," "initiation," "tutorials and acarya-kula-s," "from monasteries to universities," "from temple schools to universities," "admission and the right to teach and study," "the study," "memorizing the Veda," "professional training," "the teacher," and "the close of study," with a kind of appendix on "various languages." The text closes with reflections on "education and the Indian character," based, to a large extent but not exclusively, on psychologist Sudhir Kakar's The Inner World (2nd ed., 1981).

Scharfe notes that, whereas writing on--and reforming--education in modern India has been primarily in the hands of Westerners (William Adam's Reports of 1835-38, Thomas Babington Macaulay's Minute on Education of 1835, etc.), until now the study of education in ancient India has been primarily researched by Indian scholars, "amongst them some of the most prominent and learned" (p. 64): A. S. Altekar (Education in Ancient India, 6th ed., 1965), R. K. Mookerji (Ancient Indian Education, 3rd ed., 1960), C. Kunhan Raja (Some Aspects of Education in Ancient India, 1950), etc. (I am struck by the fact that P. V. Kane's treatment of education in the History of Dharmasastra is hardly referred to.) Scharfe is quite critical of his Indian predecessors: "For all the usefulness of the material they collected, their work is surprisingly unsatisfactory" (p. 64). Altekar's theory of steady decline in literacy from the "golden age" to the modern period, from 80% to...