Education - a Sanskrit proverb

 आचार्यात् पादं आदत्ते पादं शिष्य स्वमेधया ।

पादं सब्रह्मचारिभिः पादं कालक्रमेण च ॥

Aacaaryaat paadam adattE 

paadam shishyasvamEdayaa

paadam sabrahmacaariBhyaH 

paadam kaalakramENa ca

Meaning by word

Aacaaryaat - from the teacher 

paadam - a quarter (1/4)

adattE - is received

shishya - student

svamEdayaa - intellect or motivation

sabrahmacaariBhyaH - from fellow student

kaalakramENa - experience

ca - an

Translation

A quarter of one's knowledge or learning is received from the teacher, a quarter from the student's own ability, a quarter from fellow students, a quarter from experience. 

This is a subhaashitam (or bon-mot or proverb) in Sanskrit about education. The word itself (veda or vidya ) is not used in the proverb, but is implied. The word used for student is brahmachaari, which technically means bachelor. In ancient times, ashramas were the schools, and only bachelors were admitted, so the word expresses that cultural artifact. The European world still uses the term Bachelor or Baccalaureate for basic college degrees in arts business technology or science.

I first stumbled upon this proverb in a beginner's book on Sanskrit, given to my Sri Balasubramanian, around 2011 when he started teaching some of us Sanskrit. I pass it on to students whenever I teach them. 

I wish I had known this proverb as a student. I would have spent more time and effort learning from fellow students. I wish this were taught to all the extra hardworking teachers, who will hopefully learn to ease off, and to some happy-go-lucky teachers who wont feel too much guilt. I have noticed that almost all classes of students seem to fall under some sort of normal distribution by talent, desire, effort, diligence, passion, attention, interest etc. Not every teacher is good at explaining every aspect of his or her subject. And students often learn some concept better from a fellow student than a teacher, even an outstanding teacher. As S Muthiah and other historians of Madras have remarked (including, recently, Matt Ridley in his book The Evolution of Everything), this system of fellow students teaching younger students, was formally used in Indian education in the Madras Presidency (before being supplanted by British model of education). This was called Madras System and was introduced in several schools in Scotland by Dr Andrew Bell, who learnt and used it in Madras, India. After Bell's death, the Madras system was replaced by different teaching methods. There is still a Madras College in Scotland, which mentions Dr Andew Bell, but leaves out all mentions of Madras.

This is true whether they are in a classroom setting or in a open-air location like a monument or some public place. Age, gender, social or economic background doesnt seem to matter. 

Related posts

Tamil translation of this poem

School education in Tamilnadu - translation of Jayamohan's essay

Andrew Bell and Madras system of education - essay in Madras Musings

Madras - India's first modern city - S Muthiah lecture

Wikipedia has named this the Monitorial System rather than Madras System. Quite similar to how Lavoisier's name was removed from Lavoisier's Law, I suppose 

MacKenzie Lambton and Buchanan - S Muthiah

These are my note from S Muthiah's lecture in December 2016 at the Madras Literary Society. He spoke about three British men who contributed to Madras and its history

S Muthiah lecturing at MLS

Francis Buchanan-Hamilton added his mother's maiden name Hamilton to his own later in life. The story starts with William Jones who founded the Asiatic society of Bengal in 1784. Jones proposed that the Society study, "Man and Nature, what is performed by one or produced by the other." While in Calcutta the efforts were made under the offices of the Asiatic Society, in Madras, mostly there were individual efforts until the formation of the Madras Literary Society in 1812.

Three things one needs when one takes over and rules a country. An army, an administrative service and an understanding of what the country produces. The British did this well, and the Americans fail miserably at the third of these.

Buchanan moved up from the South to the Ganges studying agriculture, natural wealth and fauna. Buchanan was the third director of Calcutta botanical gardens. Pioneering botanical work was done in Madras before Buchanan, by Dr James Anderson. Experiments were performed first with a Nopalry in Saidapet, then at Anderson Gardens in Nungambakkam, across the current MLS premises. 

Buchanan was followed by Edinburgh doctors Johann of Copenhagen, appointed natural historian of East India company 1779. Then Roxburgh. Later Nolte commissioned local painters to draw watercolor paintings of South Indian plants, flowers, leaves etc. Nolte 's book is a treasure. Hugh Clayborn followed them. Said Nolte, "The Hindus excel in this kind of minute detail. Every detail of every leaf and flowers (250 thousand sketches) was captured by these artists."

Muthiah says we don't know who the descendants of these artists are. This knowledge is still the basis of the Botanical and Zoological surveys of India.

Anderson's house and perhaps Gardens, Nungambakkam

Colin MacKenzie He fought in the last Mysore war. Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, commanded the 33rd Regiment in Madras. He lost his way with the Army on the way to Mysore and Colin MacKenzie rescued him and showed him the right way. Later after the Battle of Assaye, Wellesley marched the Madras Regiment into a hail of Scinidia 's guns. He later said, "there is no equal to the Madras soldier anywhere in the world. "

MacKenzie became surveyor general of India. The practices he laid down are still followed. I was part of the Survey of India (said Muthiah) from 1968-1990 before satellites and GPS and we followed most of MacKenzie practices.

Mackenzie collection at GOML, Univ of Madras

Mackenzie's greatest contributions were to Indology. He collected seven thousand artefacts and number of books, mostly on palm leaves. Most of these were translated, mostly by Kavali Boriah and later, his brothers Ramiah and Lakshmiah. In 1821, three quarters of the collection was sent to Britain but much of this came back. This formed the nucleus of GOML, which added the Leyden and CP Brown collection. Mackenzie was the first of the Indologists of South India. To him more than anyone else, South India owes the records of its history.

Kavali Boriah, who assisted MacKenzie, was called the father of Indian epigraphy and paleography. 

The first Indian to write in English, he kept a journal in English.

William Lambton might make claim to greatest contribution to scientific knowledge about India. Trigonometric survey of India. Gave the shape to the map of India as we know it. Began at St Thomas Mount. First survey from Madras to Mangalore and then Kanyakumari and then the rest of India. One of the greatest achievements of nineteenth century.

Anglo Indians many from St George's school participated in survey. Much more dangerous than conquest of Wild West in America. Heat and dryness and rains and floods and snake and Tiger infested jungles. Lambton died at age of seventy near Nagpur. The trigonometrical Survey was continued by Lambton's assistant, George Everest, who completed the survey at the Himalayas, and was honored by having the highest peak named after him. Joshua d'Penny a Madras surveyor did most of the calculations for TSI for Everest. There is a Lambton peak near Ooty, which is all there is to honor his memory. More recently, a bust of Lambton was installed at the St Thomas Mount, to commemorate his accomplishment.

There is also a Lambton's pillar at the Meteorological office in Nungammabakkam, next to MLS.

William Lambton bust at St Thomas Mount

Lambton Pillar at Meteorological Office

Lambton climbed Tanjavur Big temple with the half ton theodolite, because there was no hill or any elevation in those flat plains to help the TSI. The theodoloite fell and damaged some part of the vimanam, and Lambton to wait months for it to be fixed. Perhaps the European face sculpted on it is Lambton as suggested by Venkatesh Ramakrishnan.

Notes of other lectures by Muthiah

1. Madras and its American connections

2. Madras - India's first modern city

Orientalists

0. William Jones and James Prinsep
1. Ellenborough - Abolition of slavery in India
2. Robert Caldwell - discoverer of Munda language family
3. Francis Whyte Ellis - discoverer of Dravidian language family
4. An Englishman's Tamil inscription
5. Did Macaulay undermine Indian education?

6. Erdos on Madras - A Hungarian mathematician's poem

7. The Thames and the Cooum
8. Tales of a Welsh couple

Madras - India's first modern city

Mr S Muthiah, who has written a history of Madras, Madras Discovered, and is founder of Madras Musings and chief instigator of the Madras Day celebrations, gave the first Sir S Subramanya Aiyar lecture at the University of Madras. Title: "India's First Modern City." This began with a photo of the statue of S Subramanya Aiyar, whom I and the students at the lecture did not recognize or know. He had been the first Indian Vice-Chancellor of a university - Madras University. He persuasively argued that Madras should be the considered the first modern city of India (not Calcutta). 

He recently gave another version of this lecture at a TIE meeting during the Madras Day celebrations in August, 2014. Here is a brief summary.

Sir S Subramanya Aiyar, First Indian Vice Chancellor

St George - a portrait from St Mary's Church, Armenian Street

Madras was "No man's sand"! Fort St George was founded on a strip of sand between the Portuguese settlement at San Thome and the Dutch settlement in Tiruvorriyur. The place was chosen as a good place to buy Indian made cotton textiles, for sale in England. Sir Francis Day was allowed to build the fort by the local chieftain, Darmala Venkatadri, Nayak of Poonamalee.

The English East India company had no interest in empire, they only wanted trade. Pondichery French Governor Dupleix's ambition stoked by his wife Jean Begum, really prompted the colonial ambitions of their rivals, the English. After a war, of which most Indians are ridiculously unaware, the French captured Madras but returned to English in exchange for Quebec, a province of Canada, as part of the Treaty of Aix-le-Chapelle.

(Mr Muthiah thinks the English got the better end of the deal. But I think the French needed Quebec for its forests, as they were running out of firewood. England had plenty of coal. And the cotton revolutions of John Kay's shuttle, Hargreave's spinning jenny etc had not yet happened, so England really needed Madras textiles.)

The several firsts for which Madras can be proud of, and entitling it to the claim as the first modern city of India, listed here.

Major Stringer Lawrence started the Madras regiment, the basis of the Indian army. This was after the ridiculous ease with which the French won the Adayar war. 

Governor Charles Trevelyan started the Indian civil service before Britain got one.

St George's school and orphanage on Poonamallee high road based on their earlier versions in Fort St George, first model of European education in Asia and continues to be the model for school in India today.

Governor's bank - first operating in Fort St George - later became Bank of Madras, then merged with banks of Calcutta and Bombay to become Imperial bank which later became State Bank of India.

A hospital to help sick lads became General Hospital.

In 1688 first Municipal corporation outside England started.

The Oldest library belongs to the Madras Literary Society, which saw several firsts under FW Ellis.

Armenians, exiled form Persia, came as traders and traded from West Asia to Philippines. Armenian constitution was drafted in madras!

Coral merchant street was where Jews lived.

Chepauk palace built by Nawab Of Carnatic on money borrowed from EIC which debt was written off by transfer of nawab's lands from Ganjam to Kanyakumari: this was the true beginning of British empire.

Chepauk Palace - which gave EIC an empire!

Ripon Building - the first Indian municipal corporation

College of Ft St George replaced by Haylebury college, for training civil servants.

College of Engineering (started as Survey college) Guindy. Presidency college in 1857.

Oldest school of Art and oldest veterinary college. Oldest postal system. St. Andrews Kirk built on traditional well foundation, traditional Indian design.

Parry's, the second oldest company in India, built by Dare.

Spencer's was the largest retail empire in Asia. They ran 450 railway restaurants and catered to all trains.

The call for satyagraha went from Madras when the Rowlatt act was passed.

Some Links

1. Adayar War

2. அடையாறு போர்

3. The Seven Year's War - a video

4. College of Fort St George - FW Ellis

Madras Literary Society - the first library

Armenian Church in Georgetown

Madraspolitani - Latin name for Madras

Tailpiece: Did you know that the Latin name of Madras is Madraspolitani or even that there are Latin inscriptions in Madras? Here is one from a plaque in the St Mary's Church in Armenian street.