Education and knowledge traditions

The invasions disturbed education too. Yet, from villages to temples, learning carried on, protected by kings, saints, poets and scholars, often in very hard times.

Education went on in:

• gurukulas, where students lived with their teachers;
• maṭhas and temple schools;
• Buddhist vihāras and Jain pallis;
• village pāṭhaśhālās.

Students learned Sanskrit and Prakrit grammar, astronomy, law, medicine and sacred texts.

In the South, Kanchipuram and Sringeri were famous for advanced learning in philosophy and mathematics. The Kerala School of Mathematics laid the first seeds of infinite series and calculus.

Under Muslim rulers, madrasās taught Arabic, Persian, Hindavi and Islamic studies.

Hindavi was an early form of Hindi-Urdu: Indian grammar and words, mixed with Persian and Arabic words.

Crafts and trades kept their own system, the jāti and śhreṇi (guild) system, with its own rules and apprenticeships (learning by working with a master).

The chapter's key point: "These decentralised systems were not affected by political turmoil, except in cases where whole cities and towns were devastated." Learning spread across thousands of small places was hard to stop.

Vijayanagara's rulers followed pūrvamaryade: 'following previously established practices of dharma and social norms'. So temples and maṭhas kept their support, and education continued.

In 1623, the Italian traveller Pietro Della Valle described children learning reading, writing and arithmetic in coastal Karnataka. Schools then were not like ours: usually a priest's house, or the maṇḍapa (pillared hall) of a temple.

The losses were real too. The destruction of the great universities of Nālandā and Vikramaśhilā in the late 12th century was a huge loss for all humanity. Scholars were scattered and a whole world of learning was broken.