Revisiting The Educational Heritage Of India

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Long before the first European universities appeared, India already had multi-disciplinary centres of learning that fuelled a knowledge revolution around the world. This book fills a dire need to chronicle the great educational heritage of India. It describes a unique ecosystem which ensured that Gurus and Acharyas handed the lamp of learning to generations of students. As the author puts it, "When swords quenched their thirst and famine ravaged the lands, Indians still held on to their truth that there was nothing more purifying than knowledge." She has collated information from oral history, local lore, travelogues, surviving literature, inscriptions, salvaged manuscripts and accounts of scholars and laity. Historically, the book covers a vast time span from ancient India's traditions to the deliberate destruction of its heritage. It also outlines steps that can be taken today to incorporate the most relevant aspects of ancient learning systems into the current structure of school and university education.

An alumnus of Delhi Technological University, Sahana Singh made a career shift to writing and editing after moving to Singapore from India. Her articles have been published in The Reader's Digest, Washington Post, Discovery Channel Asia, The Straits Times, Swarajya, IndiaFacts and MyIndMakers. Sahana is on the board of multiple non-profit organisations working in the areas of historical research, traditional Indic knowledge systems, and assistance to Hindu refugees. She has won several awards for journalism including the Developing Asia Journalism Award 2008.

Five years ago, if someone had asked me what I would like to write a book on, I would have said water management. After two decades of writing on water, in 2017, when I began to focus on the history of education in India, it appeared like a change of course. But it seemed pre-ordained when I became aware of my own family history.

My grandfather and generations before him were all educators specialising in Sanskrit Vyakarana and Kavya as well as in the Kannada literary tradition. They taught their students with great dedication and formed lifelong bonds with them. Their shishyas who went on to win national awards in later times wrote paeans in their honour. But when I came across a rather bitter piece written by my great- grandfather Sri Garani Krishnacharya on the continual declining standards of Kannada scholarship during British rule in the 1800s, it struck a painful chord in me.

My first book The Educational Heritage of Ancient India - How an Ecosystem of Learning Was Laid to Waste was essentially a long essay. It was well received and became popular merely by word-of-mouth even though it could only be ordered via online platforms.

India has perhaps the oldest and most enduring traditional educational system in the world, and with the broadest range of subjects taught since the most ancient period. We find all aspects of science, culture and spirituality examined in great depth and detail, along with an open tradition of debate and no theological control of learning. Several of these Indic subjects are now becoming popular throughout the world as India's yogic and dharmic traditions spread globally but they are only a small portion of a greater and more profound tradition.

India led the world in education for centuries and attracted students from numerous countries. We find this documented in the history of great university cities like Takshashila (up to the eighth century) in the northwest and Nalanda (up to the twelfth century) in Bihar that were probably the largest universities of their times.

Yet, India's educational system suffered massive efforts to destroy it over the last thousand years, largely from outside political, military, economic and religious influences.