Columbia University Contributions to Philosophy, Psychology and Education Volume 7 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ...they understand the language or not. Their two sacred languages are the Persian and the Arabic. Mr. Adam found in his inquiries, which will be referred to more particularly in the succeeding chapter, that the Persian schools were chiefly elementary, while the Arabic were more advanced. Elementary he Muhammadan elementary schools were literary Schools. and philological in character, and employed a learned language. They had, withal, a commercial value, inasmuch as throughout the Musalman rule, and under the English, until 1835, Persian was the language of the courts of law in India. To this fact was due the otherwise surprising circumstance that quite half the number of students in Persian schools were Hindus, largely of the Brahman caste. Advanced I" tne advanced schools, however, the language Schools, employed was the Arabic, and the students were, to a man, Musalmans. In these schools there were complete courses in rhetoric, logic, law, ritual and theology. Euclid and Ptolemy's Astronomy were familiar in translations, and other branches of Natural Philosophy were followed. Indeed, Arabic learning was not unknown in Europe. Although the advanced schools, few in number, attained to such heights in scholastic acquirement, and although the Musalman power was dominant in India during so many centuries, the Islamic faith was so foreign to the country, and so iconoclastic in its relations and contact with other religions of the Hindus, that Muhammadanism never became a force in the social or educational life of the people. It never was more than an external influence, although its following constitutes one-fifth of the population of India. CHAPTER II INDIGENOUS EDUCATION While the preponderating influence of religious ideals upon the...