This paper examines the nature of mathematics education in the tiai schools in the Tamil region of South India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It argues that skill competence and functionality, with a thorough orientation to the local society marked the curriculum of these schools. It is important to reconstruct the nature of the curriculum and the pedagogy of indigenous schools prior to colonial intervention.
This paper examines the nature of mathematics education in the tiai schools in the Tamil region of South India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It argues that skill competence and functionality, with a thorough orientation to the local society marked the curriculum of these schools. It is important to reconstruct the nature of the curriculum and the pedagogy of indigenous schools prior to colonial intervention.
This paper examines the nature of mathematics education in the tiai schools in the Tamil region of South India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It argues that skill competence and functionality, with a thorough orientation to the local society marked the curriculum of these schools. It is important to reconstruct the nature of the curriculum and the pedagogy of indigenous schools prior to colonial intervention.
The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education
Memory and Mathematics in the Tamil Tiai Schools of South India in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries D. Senthil Babu Department of Indology French Institute of Pondicherry, India senthil.babu@ifpindia.org Abstract The aim of this paper is to examine the nature of mathematics education in the tiai, or veranda schools in the Tamil region of South India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With the use of texts produced in the schools, British records, biographies and recorded oral accounts, a picture of the school mathematics curriculum and pedagogy is reconstructed, in relation to the agrarian and mercantile social order that sustained these institutions. This picture argues that skill competence and functionality, with a thorough orientation to the local society marked the curriculum of these schools. Such a curriculum was made possible by a system of pedagogy, where memory was a modality of learning rather than a technique or a tool, as commonly understood by modern sensibility. In this mode, language learning and number learning were integral to each other. Introduction Very little is known of the nature of mathematics education in the indigenous schools that were prevalent across the Indian subcontinent during the pre- colonial period. This paper is an attempt to understand the nature of mathematics education in these indigenous schools in the Tamil speaking region of South India during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is important to reconstruct the nature of the curriculum and the pedagogy of indigenous schools prior to colonial intervention in order to understand the dynamics of transition that followed colonialism. This paper is an attempt in that direction. The complex nature of the issues involved in understanding such dynamics may be better perceived in the context of regional studies, in contrast to conventional historical wisdom, which is based on nationalist imaginings of the erasure of indigenous schools with the coming of modern or colonial educational interventions. Regional traditions of language within India add to the complexity. The present study shows how the system of indigenous education was organized on the basis 16 Senthil Babu The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education of memory as learning. However, memory became antithetical to contemporary notions of a good education in the nineteenth century when memory was perceived as rotelearning without understanding and an image of indigenous education as backward and mechanical thereby created. This paper intends to show how the memory mode of learning was central to education in the indigenous schools. It argues that in a curriculum underpinned by skill and functionality as the goals of education, in an agrarian and mercantile social order, divided along the lines of labour and caste, memory and practice became the modalities to achieve the cognitive ends of such goals. The first part of the paper attempts to portray a typical Tamil village in the eighteenth century, providing a context for the understanding of the indigenous schools, with a brief discussion on the history of education in the region. This is followed by a discussion of the sources that were used for the study. The everyday life of the indigenous schools, curriculum and pedagogy are introduced subsequently. There follows a detailed presentation of the learning of mathematics, involving a discussion of the textbooks used in these schools. The last section of the paper is a brief outline of a social history of mathematics education in the Tamil region, in which hierarchies of social groups based on labour and caste are taken as a frame to situate the nature of pedagogic and mathematical practices both within and outside the indigenous schools. A Measuring Public The Tamil region is well defined as a geographical unit of the Indian peninsular, demarcated on two sides by the sea and on the other two by mountains. By the first century A.D. it had been roughly marked off as a cultural unit, the land of the Tamil speakers. For some centuries before that, herdsmen and hunters had sparsely populated this tropical and sub tropical region, but the first movement towards a more settled population came with the development of rice cultivation around the third or fourth century B.C. (Baker, 1984, p. 22). During the medieval period, from roughly 900 to 1300, villagers in the Tamil country built their political economy on social power structures to control water for paddy cultivation, and built a system of agrarian order on shared devotion to South Indian gods. From 1300 to 1550, migrations and frontier peasant settlement opened new parts of the region to agriculture, when the peasants fought to control stretches of territory in units of extended kinship and localized state solidarity. These battles and the post-medieval agricultural expansion produced a new style of agrarian order, which became institutionalized during the early modern period, from 1550 to 1800, when regional peasant life was woven together above all by tribute transactions between villages and royal authorities. The state replaced religion as the dominant social network in regional order and agrarian history. During medieval times, religious networks constituted the strongest threads in the agrarian system. Gods distributed peasants most valued symbolic resources, and temple-centered devotion guided peasant effort in kinship, state and market networks. By early modern times, migrations had diversified the rural population and frontier cultivation had diversified agrarian Tamil Schools of South India 17 The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education communities. Legitimate state coercion became dominant in the logic of the agrarian order. In this context, the British East India Company found ready allies and expanding opportunities for militaristic profiteering during eighteenth century warfare, when peasant willingness to support an aspiring new regime with Englishmen at its head became the key to British success (Ludden, 2005). The period that concerns us in this paper is the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, when the hierarchies of the agrarian order in village society become significant to our discussion. A typical eighteenth century Tamil village in its spatial organization resembled its caste hierarchy, with social groups contributing to the economy with distinct occupational roles, related to land and commerce and regulated by a revenue administrative structure. Quantities, estimation, measurement, planning and control were integral features of regulation in this society, embodied in the structure of taxation, forms of tribute, in agricultural practices, in the use of labour and in the payment of wages. Transactions involving exchange of food grains in particular quantities depended on occupational roles, contribution of labour, services offered and social status of the participants involved (Srinivas, Paramasivam & Pushkala, 2001, pp. 2430) 1 . For example, when it came to land revenue administration, the following representatives were involved whose job was to estimate, measure and control: kanakkar (accountant); veiy (assistant to the accountant and the one who actually measured land); tukkiri (guard and assistant); talaiyri (village assistant); nrkra or kampuki (one who regulated water for irrigation) and paiyl (manual labourer). There were other service caste groups in the same village who were related to the agrarian production processes and who received their wages in distinct percentages of the total produce of the different kinds of land cultivated in the village: the village headman, washer men, barbers, potters, sweepers, courtesans, goldsmiths, blacksmiths, carpenters and other artisanal groups. Allocations of grain were made to each of these groups from the total produce of the land in the village. The sphere of day-to-day transactions involved measures of different kinds. Occupational engagements warranted a cognitive negotiation with quantities, estimations and related computations primarily by those who laboured manually for their wages and returns, not to mention those groups who used their labour. The culture of labour and entitled returns, in parts of well-defined wholes, defined the daily lives of the labouring classes, compelling them to know and engage with practices that were mathematical. It was in this material context that the social order sustained an institution of schooling called the tiai schools. Indigenous Education in the Tamil Region Standard histories of education in Tamil society usually do not mention the presence of these elementary institutions of learning. One such study, based on a detailed investigation of inscriptions from 400 to 1300 A.D., found no evidence for the presence of Tamil elementary institutions of learning (Gurumurthy, 1979). 18 Senthil Babu The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education Ghaikai (royally patronized centers for scholars and students), Matam (religious monasteries), Agrharam (tax-free land or village settlements meant exclusively for Brahmin castes),temple colleges and Clai (feeding house and literary centers) were the kind of institutions found in the inscriptions, all of which catered to Vedic and Sanskritic education, patronized and sponsored in different ways by the ruling elite. These were mostly for the Brahmins, exclusively meant to teach the Vedas, Sanskrit language and literature, theology, law, medicine and astronomy (Gurumurthy, 1979). Institutions of higher learning involving the study of the above disciplines were confined to upper caste Brahmins in Tamil history. It should be mentioned that the absence of the lay, elementary indigenous schools in the inscriptions does not altogether negate their presence in the past. Such institutions come to light only during the early nineteenth century, when the British East India Company under the Governorship of Thomas Munro ordered a detailed survey of indigenous education, in order to formulate a model of intervention. The history of education in nineteenth century Madras is essentially a story of the tiai schools in their encounter with an ever-persistent company and colonial state, which was bent on subjecting them to highly bureaucratic processes, based on alternating phases of contempt, reconciliation and accommodation. But through all these, the tiai schools were unrelenting, and they survived well into the early decades of the twentieth century. The history of nineteenth century elementary education would look quite different if the tiai schools were recognized as the most widespread and popular institutions of learning in comparison with the tiny number of institutions started at the behest of the various British policies. The story associated with this process is a long one; briefly speaking, poorly paid school inspectors and their assistants went on long tours, trying to gain the sympathy of the tiai schoolmasters and the village elite, to shift to the modern/new curriculum, demanding that the teachers use the modern textbooks, send results and reports to them, asking them to be trained in the modern curriculum, and to learn what was then called school management techniques. But every time, after their long and tiring tours, they came back, and produced copious pages of unconvincing reports about the prospects of such a shift actually happening. It was a story of two curriculum structures, perceived and played out differently, marked by an idea of relevance, not to mention questions of ideologies that involved struggles between utilitarian, liberal and continental experiences of learning and teaching among the Europeans themselves. This arguably provided us with a curiously mixed bag of what came to be called the techno-economic complex of a colonial state machinery, that had perpetually to contend with local traditions of institutionalized learning, rooted in the sphere of practice, whose orientation was thoroughly local. Extensive, financial-incentive-based schemes were repeatedly worked out by the ever-persistent state, to woo the unrelenting tiai schoolmasters and students who were, on the other hand, compelled to share in the locally sanctioned goals of credible learning, based on memory and functionality. Tamil Schools of South India 19 The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education Sources for this Study Primary source materials related to the tiai schools are not prolific enough to obtain all information concerning them. Dharampal (1983) and Radhakrishnan (1990) use the British Educational surveys conducted during the 1820s in their study of indigenous education in Madras Presidency and the few available European travel writings. While Dharampal uses these records to argue that the British were responsible for erasing a well-established indigenous system of education, Radhakrishnan uses the same records to reveal the caste-based discrimination in these institutions. His concern was to look at differentiation in the participation of education and the role of the caste system in working out such a differentiation, because, for him, from Vedic to village education is involved a process of Brahminic ascendancy in bureaucratic hierarchy, who restricted literacy to lower classes, in order to guard their own interests. A recent study of similar institutions in Bengal by Poromesh Acharya (1996) goes beyond the statistical records of the British to look at the nature and orientation of the curriculum in such schools. He argues that such schools flourished during the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, with a curriculum that was oriented towards practical competence by following a rote method in the teaching of reading, writing and arithmetic. He concludes that the British did not appreciate the spontaneity of this tradition. All the above works are important in providing us with important information related to the nature, extent and orientation of these schools. But they fail to go beyond the colonial frames of understanding that perpetuated a stereotype of these schools as rudimentary, practical and mechanical memory-based institutions. This paper attempts to overcome this limitation by using the Tamil texts that were products of the curriculum followed in these schools, which are available as palm leaf manuscripts, and were later printed as textbooks in the nineteenth century. This study also has attempted to use a few biographies from the nineteenth century. By using pedagogic manuals, British records, biographies and some oral sources, this paper attempts to reconstruct the tiai mode of learning by focusing on distinct modes of pedagogic practice so that understanding these schools can go beyond categories likeliteracy, practicality, rote learningthat has hitherto characterized the highly limited perception of the nature of indigenous education in India. 20 Senthil Babu The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education
The Tiai Schools The tiai schools were elementary schools of a locality. These were single teacher schools, conducted in the verandas of the houses of either the teacher himself or that of notable men in the village, or in shade of a tree, or a temple. The British called it pyal schools, meaning a veranda or what is called tiai in Tamil. Every village or a group of villages had one tiai school, where the children would be within the walking distance of seven to eight miles (Sivalinkaraja & Sarasvati, 2000, p. 15). These schools catered to the children of the upper and middle caste groups that included the cultivating caste groups. The children from the lower, manual labouring caste groups had, however, no access to these institutions. They were not like the Sanskrit schools that were meant exclusively for the upper caste Brahmins for, while most of the Sanskrit schools were patronized by land grants, the tiai schools hardly received any grants. Education here involved an expense to be incurred by families of the children, paid straight to the teacher, in cash and in kind, on a periodic basis. The teacher was paid on specific occasions of religious significance and during particular stages of progress made in the curriculum. Free labour on the agricultural land of the teacher is also noted as a kind of payment (Sivalingaraja & Sarasvati, 2000, p. 14). The children usually were admitted into the school at the age of five, and the period of instruction would vary between seven to eight years. This is not an accurate figure, for variations in different areas of South India could be seen in the British surveys of tiai schools (Radhakrishnan, 1986, p. 81). The children were not divided into classes with respect to age but in accordance to their capability to learn language and arithmetic. There was no specific number of children fixed for a class; but a monitorial system was in place. The senior student, called the campillai, would receive direct instruction from the teacher, and instruct batches of other children in the daily routine, occasionally supervised by the teacher himself 2 .
There was no standardized curriculum of the tiai schools cutting across regions. Since separation of children was not on the basis of age but on the capability of the children in terms of skills in memorization and ability to write, syllabi changed accordingly 3 . The orientation of the curriculum was local and it seems the idea was not to produce scholars but to enable pupils to become a scholar, if interested. The fundamental aim was to enable the children to become competent/skilled participants in the transactions of letters and numbers within the local society and its networks in the region. The curriculum blended language and number learning together using pedagogic strategies rooted in memory as a modality of learning. The child started his learning routine with recognition of the sound-form of a letter, he then recited them aloud (practicing the tongue, as it was sometimes called), and wrote with the assistance of the monitor or the teacher on fine sand (heaped on the floor) to begin with, before graduating to writing on other surfaces, like a palm leaf with an iron stylus, at Tamil Schools of South India 21 The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education later stages of learning. The Tamil alphabetical structure interestingly is also called the neukaakku (meaning literally the long math or long computation), which as one scholar has argued is designed to integrate hearing, speech/pronunciation and visual senses all together, in phonetic measurements, aided by memory as a practice in learning (Gopal Iyer, 1990). Vocalization, visualization, and recollection through repeated exercises of recital and writing were central to the memory mode of learning in the elementary stages of learning the Tamil language. There is a similar tradition in south Indian music, which till recently was an oral tradition, dependent on memory and, without any notational forms. This feature was common in the tiai curriculum and the learning of numbers did not very differ very much from this mode. The usual curriculum was Tamil alphabets and elementary language lessons, Tamil numerals and tables, elementary Tamil grammar, Tamil calendar, Tamil dictionaries, ballads, moral lessons, forms of letter writing, and elementary bookkeeping related to agricultural and commercial accounts. Some of the texts used and which were well known in these school are Ariccuvai (language primer), ici (proverb book), Koaivntan (moral lessons), Nikau (a form of Tamil dictionary), Pillaiami (Ballad), Poilakkam (Tamil number primer), Nellilakkam (Measures primer), Ecuvai (Tamil tables), and Kuimttu (Table of squares) (Sivalingaraja & Sarasvati, 2000, p.28). The Tiai routine There are no uniform accounts in available sources about the exact nature of the daily routine of a tiai school. One source says that a child goes to school while the cock crows, takes an hour for breakfast and a two-hour break for lunch and remains in the school till sunset; the morning was spent in the recitation of new lessons; arithmetic tables while in the forenoon he is occupied with copywriting and arithmetic; the afternoons in copying new lessons and in taking new lessons from the teacher (Mutaliar, 1901, p. 392). Another source says that the children spent about nine hours in the school. Three hours in the morning (69 A.M.) devoted to older boys preparing their lessons while the beginners wrote alphabets and multiplication tables on sand with the help of monitors, in the absence of the teacher. Between ten and one in the afternoon, advanced boys wrote a copy set as instructed by the teacher, and in the afternoon (25 P.M.) came the active hours when the teacher wrote lessons in a palm leaf book, heard them repeated, and taught the pupils what was written by him in their books, while the young and the less advanced boys would be attended to by the monitors. After all the boys had had their lessons, they would stand in a line before the teacher and the multiplication tables of fractions and integers, names of Tamil years etc., would be repeated by each boy in turn. The teacher then prescribed homework, usually a problem to be solved orally in the case of advanced students (Evidence, 1882, p. 21). 22 Senthil Babu The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education U. Ve. Cminta Iyer in his biography recounts his tiai school days as follows: To school at five in the morning, recite the lessons of previous day, not always in the presence of the teacher who would anyway listen, sitting inside his house. After 6 A.M., the children went for a bath, from where they carried sand from the riverbed, replaced the old sand on the floor; those who were meant to write, practiced on the sand with their fingers, while the rest memorized. At nine, children went for breakfast; returned in an hour, when the monitor listened to the students reciting from memory; lunch at 12 noon, classes resumed at 3 in the afternoon and went on till seven in the evening. After the lessons, the teacher would tell the names of a flower, a bird or an animal to each one, which was to be remembered. Usually when children reached home, they repeated the words or the verses to their parents. This habit was to enhance memory. The next day, at five, the children got back to school, usually accompanied by the elderly member of the family (Cminta Iyer, 1990, pp.5556). The Learning of Mathematics As for Tamil alphabets, the children began their lessons in mathematics with the learning of Tamil numerals, by hearing the number names from the monitor. They would recite the number names aloud following him, simultaneously visualizing the graphic form of the number symbol. Then, they would use all these three steps to write it by themselves, first on sand, till they were used to the form of the symbol for each number. Each number was made familiar in an ordered pattern as recorded in the text called the Poilakkam (1845), which is the elementary number primer in Tamil. This was not a textbook in the modern sense, but functioned as a manual. It was not given beforehand to the students, rather each student created his own manual of the number primer, after becoming sufficiently familiar with the number forms. Only then would he finally be asked to write it on palm leaves; these copies became the pages of the students own books. The Tamil number system as practiced in the period under discussion had three layers. a) Numbers from one to ten million were grouped as Prilakkam or Pr E (literally large number). b) The second layer, called the middle number groupIai E or K vi Ilakkam, comprised the fractionsfrom 1/320 that is, one divided into 320 parts going up to one,. The series was obtained beginning with the 320 th
part, successively adding at each step of 1/320, up till one. The significant units that occur in this additive series were the following: Muntiri (1/320); Araikki (1/160); Ki (1/80); Araim (1/40); Mukki (3/80), M (1/20); M Ki (1/20 + 1/80 or 1/16); Irum (2/20); Araikkl (1/8); Mumm (3/20); Mummki (3/20 + 3/80); Nlum (4/20); Kl (1/4); Arai (1/2); Mukkl Tamil Schools of South India 23 The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education (3/4) and Ou (1). Each of these numbers had its number symbol in Tamil script. c) The third group was called the small number groupCie or K vi ciilakkam that comprised fractions from the number 1/320 x 1/320 up to 1/320. This muntiri = 1/320 was treated as one, which would then be further divided into 320 parts. The first unit was called kl muntiri (kl meaning below). This series would proceed a followss: kl muntiri (1/320 x 1/320); kl araikki (1/320 x 1/160); k ki (1/320 x 1/80) k mukkl (1/320 x ). Effectively, a tiai learner started with the learning of notations of the Tamil numerals, in an order as is evident in the Poilakkam (1845). The order of numbers was structured as an additive series in which significant numbers in the series constituted the entire number system. Such significant numbers were not arbitrary numbers; for instance, muntiri, ki and m were units of land measures in Tamil and they were numbers as well. In fact, all the fractions in the middle series represent distinct measures that were common in the local society. The child thus had a sense of the familiar when he began learning numbers. The notations then were semantically loaded terms, the meanings of numbers in the local context being already familiar to the beginner. It may also be seen here that the significant fractions were represented as combinations of muntiri, ki and m. In this process, each number was associated with the previous numbers learned in a particular meaningful order: in the learning of notations, in the Poilakkam mode, pupils also had to commit to memory a table, which was probably meant to instill the idea of fractions as part of a whole. This is important because the two layers of fractions, the muntiri series and the k muntiri series, effectively dealt with parts of one unit, containing 320 partsin the first case this unit was 1, while in the second it was 1/320. The memory table was associated too with a rhyme to be recited starting with: means three parts out of four; means one part out of four; and so on up to k muntiri1/320 x 1/320one out of one hundred and two thousand four hundred parts". (Poilakkam, 1845, p. 4). Likewise, the large numbers above one were learned up to ten million. Learning the notations here thus involved vocalization, visualization and simultaneous writing along with concurrent testing at each stage by the monitor or the teacher. This coincided with the learning of the Nellilakkam, which was very similar to the Poilakkam, but dealt with numbers that were simultaneously measures of grains (Nel = paddy/rice and Ilakkam = number). Usually, the Nellilakkam table would be contained in the Poilakkam as a text, in both the earlier palm leave manuscripts and the later printed versions, as can be seen in the Poilakkam (1845). The organization of the Nellilakkam was on the same principle of addition, where the basic unit of measure, ceviu, would be added successively to itself, till the highest unit of measure, a kalam, was arrived 24 Senthil Babu The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education at. In between the lowest and highest unit, the significant units constituted the standard-measuring units and associated numbers. This series was: ceviu, akku, uakku, uri, ni, kurui, patakku, tui and kalam. Units below the measure kalam was ordered in combination with every other unit, based on addition, constituting the entire table of numbers in the Nellilakkam. Above the highest unit, kalam, the same series became whole numbers, which would again proceed by addition up to the unit, one hundred thousand kalams. The attaining of proficiency in Tamil numerals, generally known as the learning of muntiri ilakkam and the nel ilakkam, apparently took two years before the students could confidently write by themselves on the palm leaves thereby having their own books (Cettiar, 1989). Mastering the Ecuvai The Ecuvai (1845) was the quintessential Tamil table book. They were so central to the tiai school rhythm that they prompted a European observer to call the schools themselves multiplication schools (Dharampal, 1983, p.261). The Ecuvai (1845) contained multiplication tables in an order as follows: a) Multiplication tables of one, twoup to ten; b) tables dealing with multiplication of whole numbers and fractions; c) tables of fractions multiplied with fractions; d) grain measures multiplied by whole numbers; e) grain measures multiplied by fractions. A typical table would be written as follows: 1 1 1 10 1 10 2 1 2 20 1 20 3 1 3 30 1 30
90 1 90 100 1 100 five jasmine buds bloomed into 90 jasmines shared by 5 persons (from a Tamil verse: my translation) 595 alakunilai (Ecuvai, 1845, p.8). Tamil Schools of South India 25 The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education A table involving a whole number and a fraction, will be in the pattern as in the following for the muntiri table: 1 x 1/320, 10 x 1/320, 100 x 1/320
and so on up to 1000 x 1/320. This series will continue for each of the fractions in the middle series as mentioned above. Followed by this are the tables involving fractions multiplied by fractions. For example, for the muntiri table, the number muntiri would be multiplied by each fraction beginning with araikki, ki, m, and so on, up to mukkl. Then the grain measures, as in Nellilakkam, would each be multiplied by whole numbers up to one hundred in the same pattern. This is be followed by a multiplication table of each grain measure with the rest of the measures, such as ceviu x kku, ceviu x uakku and so on up to ceviu x kalam. Below each table, a Tamil verse in a prosodic form functioned as a mnemonic to remember a number, which would be the sum of the products of that particular table. For example, in the first table given above, the verse about jasmine buds was to denote the number 595, which is the sum of the products of the first table. Every table has a prosodic verse denoting the sum for it, and when sung aloud, these verses have a rhythm that quickly entered the memory. Here is an instance where we can see that in a memory-based learning system, how a prosodic verse functioned as a mnemonic to remember an entire table that lent meaning to the mnemonic only in that context. It was called alakunilai, in Tamil meaning position that points; alaku = pointer and nilai = place or position. There was an additional function to these verses: in some higher order texts, that will be discussed later, such as the Kaakkatikram (1950), where summations of series were dealt with, such mnemonics assisted the operations. Each one of the tables in the above order was memorized by being sung aloud under the leadership of a monitor. For example, for the first table, the table will be remembered as Or ou ou (one and one is one), paittou pattu (ten and one is ten), r ou irau (two and one is two), Irupatou irupatu (twenty and one is twenty) and so on till Nrou Nru (hundred and one is hundred), followed by the reciting of the mnemonic verse, which would be sung as follows: mallikai aintu malarnta p toru kouvr aivar parittu alakunilai 595 (Ecuvai, 1845, p. 8). 26 Senthil Babu The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education
It should be noticed here that the entire table would be committed to memory step by step, by the simultaneous writing of each step, on dust, a heap of rice husk, or fine sand. A Portuguese traveller, Peter de la Valle, travelling in the Malabar area of south India in the year 1623, came across a typical Ecuvai class and has recorded it. Observing four boys learning the Ecuvai after a strange manner, which I will here relate. They were four, and having all taken the same lesson before the Master, to get that same by heart, and repeat likewise their former lessons, and not forget them, one of them singing musically with a certain continued tone, (which hath the force of making a deep impression in the memory) recited part of the lesson; as for example, one by itself makes one; and whilst he was thus speaking, he writ down the same number, not with any kind of pen, nor in paper but with his finger on the ground, the pavement being for that purpose strewed all over with fine sand; after the first had wrote what he sung, all the rest sung and write down the same thing together. Then the first boy sung, and writ down another part of the lessonand so forward in order. When the pavement was full of figures, they put them out with the hand, and if need were, strewed it with new sandand thus they did as long as exercise continued; in which manner, they told one, they learned to read and writewhich certainly is a pretty way. I asked them, if they happen to forget or be mistaken in any part of the lesson, who corrected them and taught them, they being all scholars without the assistance of any Master; they answered me, and said true, that it was not possible for all four to forget or mistake in the same part, and that they exercised together, to the end, that if one happened to be out, the other might correct him (Dharampal, 1983, p. 260). Here we see how repetition in a context of mutual instruction proceeded through recognition of sound of a number by hearing its name. Loud recital of the name and the simultaneous writing of it cognitively associated the sound with a symbol. This proceeded in association with two numbers in arithmetic relationship involving multiplication and/which/remaining remained central to the memory mode of learning. Again, vocalization and visualization and concurrent writing marked this mode and each table was thus committed to memory. Towards the end of the study period, the students also committed to memory the various conversion tables involving measures of weight and volume (Ecuvai 1845). The tables were followed by a long section called the varucappiappu (literally meaning, birth of a year), wherein the students committed to memory several lists that included a list of the Tamil years according to the Tamil calendar, the days of the week, names of stars, signs and planets, names of various gods and goddesses, and names of various canonical texts including epics, kvyas, smritis, etc. A familiarity with the local wisdom by mere recognition of names and the Tamil Schools of South India 27 The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education practicingof this by writing down the names constituted tiai learning at this stage. The last section in the learning of mathematics in the tiai school was the learning of tables of squares, called the kuimttu. Kui was a square unit for the measure of land, whose higher units were m, ki or vli in certain regions of the Tamil country. A basic unit of length in the measurement of land is the kol, meaning a rod, which could be 12 ft, 18 ft or 24 ft. depending on the region in question. A square unit, namely the kui was obtained by squaring a rod measure. In kuimttu, students memorized the table of squares. There were two sections to this, a) Peukui (lit. meaning: large measures), involving measures in whole numbers, beginning with 1 and ending with the square of 32; and b) Ciukui (small measures), beginning with the square of mki (1/20 + 1/80), araikkl (1/8 x 1/8), kl (1/4); arai (1/2), mukkl (3/4), okl (1 + ); oarai (1 + ); onne mukkl (1 + ); irakl (2 + )up to ten. Interestingly, from the text of the kuimttu, we gain an idea of how students learned multiplication as an operation as well. For instance, in the table of the perukui, the squares of all the measures up to ten would be listed, but at 11, the square of 11 was listed in the table as follows: 11 x 11 10 x 10 = 100 10 x 1 = 10 110 10 x 1 = 10 120 1 x 1 = 1 121 and the same pattern was followed up to the square of 32. We see how multiplication was performed, by the identification of the number into two easily recognizable parts (bringing about a closer resemblance to the order in Ecuvai, in the process), when it became a series of addition. In ciukui, again, this may be demonstrated for instance, in the case of the square of say, m mukkl, which is the square of 3 + . Here, (3 + ) x (3 + ) 3 x 3 = 9 3 x = 2 + 11 + 3 x = 2 + 13 + x = + (1/20 + 1/80) 14 + (1/20 + 1/80) 28 Senthil Babu The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education
During the actual process of memorizing, the operation would be recited out loud,step by step. At each step, the recital itself denotes the nature of the operations involved, as for instance,, three and three is nine .Moreover, the sum at the end of each step is also recounted as part of the recital. For example, the above square proceeded in the following manner: Kui for three and three-quarters. Three and three is nine. Three and three-quarter is two and a quarter. Balance eleven and a quarter. Three and three-quarter is two and a quarter. Balance thirteen and a half. Three-quarter and three-quarter is one half and one-by-sixteen. Balance fourteen and a one-by-sixteen (Ecuvai, 1845, p. 8). Here we see how, in the multiplication of fractions, the product and the number were separated in terms of recognizable fractional units, and how multiplication proceeded as a series of additions. The kuimttu, thus equipped the learner to deal with land measures and the computations of the area of land in all variations. Problem Solving in the tiai Schools As mentioned previously, in the discussion of a typical daily routine of a tiai school, the morning sessions were usually spent on memorizing and practising the various tables. In the afternoon, probably the most active session of the day, teachers taught the students the lessons they had memorized in the forenoon, in the case of language learning, supplying meanings for words memorized. In the case of mathematics, problem solving was the mode by which the entire exercise of memorizing tables was given meaning, and skills of retrieval and associative memory were called upon in an algorithmic context. Problems were posed as word problems, as in the modern sense. Problems usually involved operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and reduction of measures involving the rule of three even though there were no separate tables for addition or subtraction. The word problems, posed orally, were meant to be computed mentally, though initially the process of solving was proceeded by each student reciting each step aloud, to be heard by the whole class, monitored by the teacher. This was popularly known in Tamil as maakkanakku, (Cminta Iyer, 1990, p. 56) meaning mental computation. Before the close of the school day, problems of this kind would be given as homework. Problem solving then happened outside the school, in an entirely non-institutional context, where the elderly and the parents were involved in the process. The next morning, the answers to the given problems were discussed, repeated in recital, and then it was back to the business of memorizing the tables. Tamil Schools of South India 29 The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education In this mode of learning, recollective memory would have to score well in an algorithmic context, involving more than one variable and arithmetic operation at the same time. Associating the table with the memory of a particular number, and with the variable to be dealt with in the problem, at a particular stage of an algorithm becomes an issue. This triggers a process that may be conceived in the following steps: a) recognition of the variable in the problem b) setting off the algorithm c) recollection from a sequence or a table d) associating with the algorithm and solving the problem e) adding it to the repository of skills f) and conceptualizing it as part of a system of algorithms 5 (Kamesvaran, 1998). In this mode, sets of rules were built up from repeated memories, the principle then would be to recognize and organize likeness, when verses, prosody and tables aided the process of learning. Associative nature of memory became crucial in the context of arithmetic operations involving transformations. Interestingly, however, there was no explicit mathematical representation of the process of transformation, and no reference to the relatedness of arithmetic operations could be found in the entire corpus of the tiai texts under discussion here. Language, curiously enough, was a very significant factor in the learning of mathematical operations. For example, for addition-based operations, the y sound was the signal to recognize addition (e.g. Ki + muntiri will be ki y muntiri) but when multiplication was involved, the absence of the y sound would mark the process involved as that of multiplication and not addition (e.g., Ki x muntiri will be ki muntiri). Language learning and number learning were thus integral to each other in the tiai mode. In the entire process of problem posing within the tiai school system, problem solving happened both within and outside the school. Outside, the community participated in the exercise, creating a common pool of problems that remained as riddles and aphorisms in the local society. This helped in the cultivating of computing skills through a process that was closely related to the pedagogic strategies practiced inside the school; in both spheres, memory was central. This entire relationship remained as local knowledge within the society, where members of all the strata of the society contributed to the circulation of that knowledge, including those who had no exposure to the formal modes of training in reading and writing. Within the institution, or outside, the value associated with proficiency in problem solving would not have been that of speed and accuracy of computation so much as that of prudence (Carruthers, 1990, p. 64). The crucial stage is the act of recollection from the organized order of the Ecuvai, which itself now seems to be constituted in that particular order as a system of mnemonics. The ability to recollect may be natural but the 30 Senthil Babu The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education procedure itself was formed by habit and practice, rendering the mnemonic organizational structure as a system of heuristics in the process. Then recollection becomes synonymous with reasoning, and even with interpretation (Carruthers, 1990, pp. 6064). 6 When the students finally wrote down their memorized Ecuvai on palm leaves, that marked the final stages of learning in the school, with each student owning his own set of manualsthe Poilakkam, Nellilakkam, the Ecuvai and the Kuimttu., A whole process of dealing with mental representations seems to have given birth to the written form, where writing would help memory rather than gaining unique significance for itself. Writing seemed to add to the memory images, not in a simply abstract manner but as affective images. This function of writing has to be recognized if the memory mode of tiai learning is to be understood in a perspective different from the category of literacy. Writing in the tiai mode, on the other hand, also made the student eligible for an occupational role, say that of a scribe, or at least for an apprenticeship with the local revenue official or with a trader, where learning on the job would add further experience to his repository of skills. Inthe process, the student became a qualified member of the measuring public, as a competent individual, engaged in the several modes of transactions involving land and labour within the local community. Ti ai Curriculum, Pedagogy and Caste So far, we havel ooked atthe world of the tiai pedagogy, in relation to the learning of arithmetic, with the help of the manuals. But what can these texts tell us about the nature of the relationship between the mathematical practices in circulation among the various sections of the local community,and the tiai curriculum, its pedagogy along with the character of the society itself? The entire set of arithmetic representations seems almost always to be obsessed with tabulations of quantities and measuresinvariablyin relationwith each other, always transforming themselves through such relationships, always associated with the skills to manipulate them both within the institutional setting and outside. Inwhat was the outside world for the tiai school, everybody, no matter what their social status or occupational role, educated or uneducated, manual labourer or clerical labourer, was certainlyaware of the kind of mathematical manipulations that constituted the core of the tiai arithmetic curriculum; to all these people, however, such knowledge was deeply embedded in the common language familiar to them, very much cutting across the caste hierarchy. That was why the occasions when the members of the local community interacted with each other, in very informal situations that nevertheless involved subtle moments of challenge to each other, based on riddles and problems, testing each others proficiency, or let us say, prudencewere always the most social of the occasions: during festivals, a special function in a household, or even a visit to the temple. The most common Tamil Schools of South India 31 The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education form of such an interaction could be imagined as an elderly person posing to a younger group, in a teasing fashion, a set of problems, and asking them to come up with the solution. It was in such a context that the learning of the tiai was tested, often bringing the competence of the local teacher under public evaluation, through entirely social means. His teaching, and the skills and competence of the children, came into the sphere of public scrutiny, gaining credibility or not. The tiai learning was compelled to come out into the open, when it had to be displayed and performed in public (Sivalingaraja & Sarasvati, 2000, pp. 71-72). There is another story to be told here. In the list of occupational groups mentioned at the beginning of this paper, there were three personalities associated with the administration of land, in the revenue bureaucracy: the veiyn, the toi, and the nrkran or the kampuki. These occupations customarily belonged to the lower caste groups, who were untouchables, physically segregated at the far edge of village society; their presence would not be appreciated in any of the mainstream activities of the village and they would never in their life have touched an Ecuvai. But it was the veiyn or the toi, (village assistants, who actually measured land) who would take up the measuring rod, to engage with the physical and in an equally cognitive act of measuring an extent of landwhere as the designated, learned karnam or village accountant, would record the measures in writing, in codes specified by a system that further trained the skills the tiai school had provided him with. The nrkra (water regulator), a person who owned nothing, and always poor, was entrusted with the task of regulating distribution of irrigation water to all the lands in the village. This involved computation of time, motion and area to be irrigated in accordance with the various sluices of a tank at this individuals/persons disposal: this was his occupation. The tiai curriculum dealt with his occupational skills, in the problem-solving mode. Situations that the vettiyn (village assistant who measured land) and the nrkran (water regulator) lived with and cognitively engaged with as part of their manual work were subjects of learning within the institution, in which they and their children could never set foot. . This set of observations returns us to the issue of the basis of the set of arithmetic representations that has been discussed in this paper. I am inclined to treat these mathematical representations and manipulations as products of extensive processes of standardization that evolved out of concrete practices involving the work of various social groups. In that case, the question of alloting agency to this process of standardization becomes significant. Dominant historiographical conventions have hitherto ascribed agency for this historical process to the centralizing state alone. Alternatively, we might think of the agents of manual labourconcrete and cognitive at the same timeas the agents of these extraordinarily extensive processes of standardization: those who were constantly in a dialogue with the machineries of the state and its ruling elite, contributing significantly thereby to the history of the evolution of knowledge. 32 Senthil Babu The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education Whenever the state decided to standardize, as when a medieval Tamil King altered the standard of, say, the measuring rod (from 12 to 24 feet) in the region under his rule, in a political act towards gaining legitimacy for his rule. Through such measures, he was able, from a distance, to extend and establish his authority and impact on normal transactions down to the level of village society. (Subbarayulu, 2001, pp. 31-40). People like the veiyn (assistant to the accountant and the one who actually measured land) and the nrkran who regulated water from public tanks) negotiated with measures, learned and , manipulated them; all this experience would then be appropriated into another sphere of learning, in the tiai schools, where it turned into knowledge, and gained credibility as competence acquired through a codified and textualized process. The adaptation of this strategy was common to both spheres: the strategy of memory and mnemonic-centered practice. It was, seemingly, a natural choice of strategy seeing that memory has the propensity to be enhanced with practice. We may therefore say that the orientation of the curriculum had a reason to be thoroughly local. In an internalist sense, arithmetic representations and the tiai mode of problem solving was socially sufficient in the context of localized socio-economic transactions, where the memory-based pedagogic strategies would ensure skill, and functionality constituted knowledge. From the perspective of the history of mathematics though, what were the possibilities for these arithmetic means and representations to evolve further into higher order representations? Can goals of this sort be discerned internally? Where do we look for such possibilities? Within the society, there were texts like the Kanakkatikram (1950), which recorded such higher order engagements with arithmetical knowledge. Typically, these texts contained rules or procedures of computation in vers which, addressed concerns related to measurement of land with respect to its area, price, yield, measures of volume, weight, time and gold, magic squares, exhaustion problems and partitions (Kanakkatikram, 1950). Even there, in a social sense, all such representations with embedded cognitive aspirations were characterized by a yearning to be in control of a situation, to plan, to anticipate and to recognize patterns. Occasions would, however, always be the ordinary daily life in the community. Based on the preceding discussions, it may be argued that the memory mode of learning and the problem solving strategies, in a cognitive sense, would help qualify a learner comfortably to handle a text like the Kanakkatikram with proficiency, provided the learner had access to additional training and guidance. Such aspirants were supposed to go looking for specialized masters, who might not be available in the immediate vicinity. If he were interested, and the family able to afford the cost of such a graduation, a student always had the option to move on (Cminta Iyer, 1990). Tamil Schools of South India 33 The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education
The question next arises as to whether, in an externalist sense, the tiai school as a social institution did offer such a possibility to all those who could legitimately partake in its sustenance? This brings us, necessarily, to the subject of cognitive universals and social distribution of abilities that are often strongly associated with questions of access and denial. If we were to look at the tiai school from the outside, but from within the community, it would be clear that it had very strong monetary connotations to its functioning,* often demanding expenditure for the teachers remuneration. Caste was an organizing principle of this institution, in which exclusion of certain social groups was inherent and necessary to its local sustenance (Radhakrishnan, 1986). If the local community is seen as a sphere for the circulation of skills involving families with distinct occupations then, evidently, each had a reputation within the community, which could diffuse amongst forms of discrimination within the tiai school. Verbal exchange between the discriminated student and, say, the campillai or the teacher would bring parentage and the local reputation of the family into the center of learning. Transition phases in learning, for example, graduating from writing on sand to writing on palm leaves, were marked by special rituals, that demanded higher fee and input costs. Forms of punishment within the tiai schools were severe, and it was common lore that the rod ruled (Cminta Iyer, 1990; Mutaliar, 1901). Distance to school was often a dampener because not every village had a tiai school; children would often have to walk seven or eight miles to reach one (Sivalingaraja & Sarasvati, 2000). The public evaluation of the learning in tiai schools cut both ways. Public displays of skills in informal interactions within the village kept the teacher under the constant scrutiny of the local public. It also aided in the creation of stereotypes of particular children, who had failed; this invariably crept into the tiai classroom atmosphere. Are these possibility-enhancing modes? Principles of exclusion and dynamics of life in a small community undoubtedly had impact on the mode of functioning of the tiai schools and we are bound to ask whether there can be innovation or discover from within, in such a context? Though such goals were never explicitly on the agenda of the tiai schools, they were not beyond the publicly sanctioned goals of institutionalized learning in the contemporary society. Local public perceptions would always relegate learning to functionality, as catering to local needs and defined by the boundaries of local knowledge, thus creating socially credible notions of capability. The tiai as an institution was thus circumscribed socially to the realm of functionality. It is here that the story of the transition of the tiai schools upon contact with the techno-economic complex of British colonialism becomes interesting. If concepts, skills, reasoning, ways of abstraction were, as we have tried to show here, all immersed in the functional tiai mode of learning, then the modern seemed to have internally sealed off functionality, privileging instead a certain image of reasoning, of a kind perceived and articulated from within the framework of the 34 Senthil Babu The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education liberal individualism of nineteenth century Europe. This is when politics penetrated into the heart of the tiai curriculum: politics based on narrow perceptions of a tradition, and sometimes even those that would only allow a perfunctory engagement with that tradition. These policies, securely rooted in a power structure, began by tampering with the tiai schools, going on to alter them by co-opting them, before they were made irrelevant during the early decades of the twentieth century. Even when the schools themselves did not change much, the social ethos that sustained them changed irreversibly.
Poilakkamelementary number primer for tiai schools (Courtesy French Institute of Pondicherry, Pondicherry).
Notes 1. The evolution of land revenue administration in relation to changing Tamil society involves a huge literature of social and economic history. I have therefore opted for a different kind of primary source, which was a household survey undertaken by a British civil engineer, Thomas Barnard and his Indian assistant Cenkalvarya Mutalir, during the years 1767 to 1774, in the Chingleput District of the then Madras Presidency, under the orders of the British Government with the intention of assessing potential returns from that district to the East India Company. Involving 2100 villages, this exercise provides a glimpse of the nature of local economy and society, evident through forms of record keeping by local village revenue officials, headed by the village accountant, a hereditary position, whose skills in memory and account keeping would be initially grounded in the training offered in the tiai schools. The publication referred to reproduces the documents of two villages in the district surveyed, in print. 2. It is from here that Dr. Andrew Bell, pioneer of modern elementary education in England learnt the nuances of the functioning of the Madras School system, while he was working as the Superintendent of the Male Asylum in Egmore, under the auspices of the East India Company. This also came to be known as the monitorial system, when Joseph Lancaster introduced further modifications into the system. This resulted in some bitter rivalries along the lines of church loyalty, between the two, based on originality claims Tamil Schools of South India 35 The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education but also produced interesting innovations in the area of elementary education pedagogy in England and Europe. The story of how the tiai pedagogy and technique traveled and made itself useful in England is an interesting area of study in itself, which requires further research. 3. It is a curious aspect that requires further exploration into the issue of children not divided into sections of learners depending on age. Does it then mean a marked absence of conception of childhood in that society, underwritten in the nature of pedagogic practice in the tiai schools, or that the memory mode of learning by its nature found the issue of age, irrelevant to its cognitive success? 4. The text of Poilakkam referred to here is a printed edition found at the British Library, London published in the year 1845. However, there are several copies of Poilakkam available in palm leaf manuscripts in several repositories, where variations are usually minimal. The printed edition is almost the standard version found in manuscripts as well. It was printed for the students of a tiai school in Bangalore in 1845 by an association called the Caturveta Siddhanta Sabha, under the supervision of one V. Rmacmy Mutalir. The publication of texts like the Poilakkam, Nellilakkam, Ecuvai etc., in Tamil beginning in the early nineteenth century was prompted by multiple concerns from among the native elite, marked by political and commercial aspirations. 5. The number primers discussed here do not contain any problems, as seen in the respective texts. However, the nature of the problems and the mode of their working could be discerned from texts like the Kanakkatikram. Editions of these texts are available in print, where Tamil scholars have attempted commentaries on the original verse-based texts. The range of examples discussed in such editions will testify to the procedure summarized here. For example, see (Kamesvaran, 1998, pp. 170248). 6. Mary Carruthers, in her work The Book of Memory passionately argues that memory was a modality of learning in itself in medieval Europe, and hence independent of orality and literacy. She argues that learning can be seen as a process of acquiring smarter and richer mnemonic devices to represent information, encoding similar information into patterns, organizational principles, and rules which represent even material we have never before encountered, but which is like what we do know, and thus can be recognized or remembered (Carruthers, 1990, p. 2). Her work has vividly captured a entire world of learning, that would have been completely lost on us, if memory for instance were to be associated with values such as mechanical learning or rote learning, like the British did with respect to their attitudes and interventions of the tiai schools in the nineteenth century. The history of the British intervention in Indian education as part of their colonialist enterprise, if rewritten from the perspective of the tiai schools and its negotiation with the British policies, we are bound to get a radically different picture, from the currently dominant understanding of the emergence of modern education in colonial India. 7. Peter Damerow, in his work The Material Culture of Calculation, outlines a conceptual framework to understand the evolution of numbers as cognitive universals, in a scheme where he identifies distinct historical stages in the development of logico-mathematical thought. But the place for social distribution of abilities rooted in experiences of work 36 Senthil Babu The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education and labour that would have contributed to similar processes seems very limited in his framework. See Damerow (1999). 8. The exact processes involved in the translation of continental engagements with math pedagogy into a colonial society, ways by which such translations negotiated with indigenous traditions in the colonized society and what resulted in the process is an area awaiting serious attention. For an influential contemporary statement on the learning of mathematics from nineteenth century Europe, see Whewell (1836). References Acharya, Poromesh. (1996). Indigenous Education and Brahmincal Hegemony in Bengal. In Nigel Crook (Ed.). The Transmission of Knowledge in South Asia: Essays on Education, Religion, History and Politics (pp. 98118). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Baker, C. J. (1984). An Indian Rural Economy 18801955: The Tamilnad Countryside. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Cminta Iyer, U. V. (1990). E Carittiram (My History). Chennai: U. V. Cminta Iyer Library and Research Centre. Carruthers, J. Mary. (1990). The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press. Celvakesavaraya Mutaliar. (1901). Tamil Education: Address Delivered to the Students of the Teachers College, Saidapet. Madras Christian College Magazine, January, 391395. Damerow, Peter. (1999). The Material Culture of Calculation A Conceptual Framework for a Historical Epistemology of the Concept of Number. Preprint 117. Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Dharampal. (1983). The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Education in the Eighteenth Century. New Delhi: Biblia Impex. Evidence taken before the Madras Provincial Committee of Education. (1882). Madras: Government Press. Ecuvai. (1845). Madras: Caturveta Siddhanta Sabha. Gopal Iyer, T. V. (1990). Tamil Euttum um (Tamil: Letters and Books). Tanjore: Tamil University Publications. Gurumurthy, S. (1979). Education in South India Ancient and Medieval Periods. Chennai: New Era Publications. Kamesvaran, Sathyabama (Ed.). (1998). Kanakkatikram. Tanjore: Sarasvati Mahal Library Publications. Kanakkatikram. (1950). Chennai: The South India Saiva Siddhantha Publishing House. Ludden, David. (2005). Early Capitalism and Local History in South India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Tamil Schools of South India 37 The International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education Ponnilakkam. (1845). Madras: Caturveta Siddhanta Sabha. Radhakrishnan, P. (1986). Caste Discriminations in Indigenous Indian Education I: Nature and Extent of Education in Early 19 th century British India, Working Paper No. 63. Madras: Madras Institute of Development Studies. Radhakrishnan, P. (1990). Indigenous Education in British India: A Profile. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 24 (1), 127. Sivalingaraja. S & Sarasvati. S. (2000). Pattonpatm Nrrntil Ylppattu Tamil Kalvi (Tamil Education in Nineteenth Century Jaffna). Colombo: Kumaran Book House. Srinivas, M. D., Paramasivam, T. K., Pushkala, T. et al. (2002). Tirupporur marrum Vatakkuppattu Patinettm Nrrntu Avanankal (Tirupporur and Vaakkuppattu: Eighteenth Century Documents). Madras: Centre for Policy Studies. Subbiah Cettiar. (1989). Interview with Prof. Y. Subbarayulu; ttankui, Tamil Nadu. Subbarayulu. Y. (2001). Studies in Cola History. Chennai: Curapi Patippakam. Whewell, William. (1836). Thoughts on the Study of Mathematics as a part of Liberal Education The second edition. Cambridge: J & J. J. Deighton.
Historical Significance of The British Education System in Colonial Punjab A Study in Perspective of Its Consequences On The Native Society and Education
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