Primary education in Sanskrit: methods and goals *.

• Author: Gerow, Edwin

A TRUISM INDOLOGISTS OFTEN RESORT TO is that the are of traditional India is in many respects situated vis-a-vis our own as its opposite pole. On the one hand, we find a system of seemingly fixed castes that determines ones social persona as a tact or nature; on the other, a notion that the individual by right is autonomous and delegates his authority to the greater society by compact. On the one hand, a behavioral ideal that privileges the absence of self in all its forms and abolishes its significance in an infinitude of rebirths; on the other, a view that "self-interest" is the motor of every success and that this life is the sole theater of enjoyments. On the one hand, an anhistorical civilization that is preoccupied with transcendental, and definitely non-dateable, matters; on the other, a record-keeping culture that has made "information" the be-all and end-all of existence. The list can be quite long. Traditional Indian culture, aspects of which survive even today, is still largely inherited from one's parents and may be said to be, in that sense, "innate," "essential." It is very unmodern, as no one needs to be reminded, in these days of "finding yourself" and shopping for "culture" like you shop for a better Aromatherapy or domestic "conjoint." Now, in my view--unlike much that passes under this rubric nowadays, these are matters of real "diversity." I have chosen here to deal with one of the aspects of that "diversity" that is most telling, most diagnostic of the whole, something akin to a litmus test: education--the education of the young. Another truism is that every culture replicates itself in its system of education--already a sad enough commentary on our own. That of traditional India is no exception--and mirabile dictu, the institutions of education that have over centuries served to articulate it are still, at least vestigially, observable in practice today. It would be difficult to discover anywhere greater contrasts, of style, of method, of content, of goal. A study of their techniques of transmission is a study of how a cultural alternative is still possible, even in our day.

I may consider myself at least minimally qualified to address such a subject, having spent a year of my youth as a student in the Mysore Sanskrit College, one of the better endowed traditional schools of India, reorganized in its present form in 1876 under the patronage of then Raja Chamarajendra Wodeyar (r. 1868-95). (1) I would like to focus here on some of the special features of this traditional system of education, as I observed it then and later, and to the extent that it survives in such places. One further personal remark may be in order: this penchant I have for representing myself, even now, as a student is not at all an affectation. My year in the College accustomed me to yet another polarity: I, who now, at the close of my career, have acceded somehow to the presidency of this venerable society (one of the more prestigious offices of Western Orientalism), am, in fact, the merest of debutants when measured against the attainments of a true pundit, pandita--the symbol and perfection of the traditional Indian education.

The pundit of whom I speak is a phenomenon familiar enough, especially in his most refined form, the master of traditional sastra that many of us have encountered during our academic sojourns, and who may often have assisted us as we accustomed ourselves to the mysteries of Indic wisdom--and, if I may say so, without whose aid we might not have become so confident about what we think we know. The pundit, in this sense, has been subjected to not a few studies, historical and otherwise (including a symposium volume just published (2)), but much less effort has been devoted to examining the system itself that aims at the formation of such a savant--its methods and principles, so to speak; and those few studies that I do know of, from Adam's Reports (1835-38) to the Report of the Sanskrit Commission (1958), have dealt with the matter largely as a statistical, rather than an ethical, exercise. (3) Even more neglected have been the elementary stages of study--despite the obvious truth that it is they that lay the groundwork for the later successes that are more familiar. It is these elementary stages that I wish chiefly to discuss here. Apart from the novelty of the subject, such an inquiry engages many issues of a comparative sort, and allows us to pose in sharply defined terms the question of the survival of the institution as such. For, deprived of its foundation, the institution is weakened and far less able to cope with the multiple menaces of "modernity." My remarks, though, should not be taken as a study of decline--though they doubtless could have been so framed--rather they are more akin to a study of an ideal, against which might be measured a decline, but which deserves to be appreciated in and of itself, as it is (or was) supposed to function (and perhaps did until very recently).

The Mysore Sanskrit College is a complete institution of traditional education, accepting as students, at one extreme, eight-year-old beginners, and at the other, graduates pursuing an advanced degree in one of the areas of traditional study, such as Vyakarana (grammar) or Advaita Vedanta. (4) Instruction at the MSC is graded into five levels, which fall into two large groupings; the three lower levels, termed Prathama, Kavya, and Sahitya, (5) of which I will chiefly speak here, correspond approximately to the elementary, middle, and high schools of our American system. They are common to all students and constitute, as it were, the element of "general education" in the traditional system. By contrast, the two upper levels, under the name Sastravibhaga (sastra, or "science" section), offer specialized programs of study leading to the degrees of Vidvan and Siromani, in principle equivalent to the B.A. and M.A. of the Western college. Here, the student is concerned only with the "established" (siddha) form of his subject, excluding, at least nominally, every other subject. (6) One might suspect here a slight English (or even German) perfume, but the traditional ideal of the educated man is in no wise hostile to such specialization, and has adapted to this format without apparent shock. (7)

Before indicating briefly how the curriculum of the college is distributed over the five levels of instruction, I should mention the division of faculties, which reflect much more evidently the traditional roots of the institution. In effect, that division is seen chiefly at the superior levels--and, in fact, reflects the traditional version of vocational or professional education. For the three faculties are each intended to form the student, typically a brahmin, in a particular metier or function--first, that of sastri (which we have taken as typical of the institution itself), then, that of officiating priest in a Hindu temple (that faculty is called Agamavibhaga), and, finally, and from the angle of the tradition, still the most prestigious, that wherein the Veda and its accessories are rescued from collective oblivion and are consigned to the memory of the next generation (Vedavibhaga). The division into three reflects also a division of subject matter--the two latter corresponding to the domains of the two styles of religiosity still publicly cultivated in Hindu India, that of the temple, locus of the great gods, and that of the an-iconic sacrifice. The third faculty is that of the pandita, properly speaking, the savant trained in traditional Indian science, who thus has the allure, caeteris paribus, of a lay expert--keeping in mind, of course, that no traditional "science" is truly alien to "religion."

The sastras that one may study in the college in Mysore are numerous: all the Vedantas, including that of the Lingayatas; grammar; logic, in its Navya Nyaya form; ritual exegesis; and, of course, astrology and poetics--but neither Samkhya nor its associated Yoga, another index of how traditional this college is. I will say no more of the advanced stages of instruction: the methods utilized at this level are better known in any case, the subject goes well beyond the limits I have imposed on myself here. As should be obvious, the corps of teachers in each section is recruited chiefly among that section's graduates, or those of similar schools elsewhere.

The three initial levels of instruction, common to all students, devolve in effect on the Sastravibhaga, in the sense that the teachers are attached to that section and there received their formation. They constitute an integrated course of study that prepares the student to take up a further specialty, but which, in and of themselves, are deemed to form the basis of any cultivated life, and which are intended, as is often observed, specifically for the man who is well anchored in this world: the householder, or grhastha. The grhastha, need I add, is also the domestic priest of the Hindu tradition. The students belonging to the two other faculties, I should also add, participate only marginally in the courses of this generalizing faculty: Vedic students understandably have little time remaining after mastering their rather onerous tasks of memorization, while those intending to become temple priests are still in part selected hereditarily and devote only a minimum of time to studies that do not directly relate to familial duties. (8)

It is therefore to the non-specialized priest that the instruction of the Sastravibhaga is essentially destined, whether he be the young brahmin of traditional worldly vocation or, in rare cases, one especially gifted, wishing to qualify himself for graduate study in one of the sastras. To that it must be added that since Independence and the adoption of reforms aimed at improving the lot of the less fortunate castes, non-brahmins also are admitted as students in Mysore (which was reserved, by royal decree, for brahmins alone...