Terrestrial Lessons by Sumathi Ramaswamy

Author:Sumathi Ramaswamy [Ramaswamy, Sumathi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-226-47674-2
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2017-08-02T04:00:00+00:00

Schooling in Modern Earth and Modern Sky was deemed a sure remedy for such idolatrous follies, and such schooling, the growing number of mostly indigent children in their various rural institutions did begin to receive.

Their crowning educational achievement however was the famed Serampore College, founded in 1818 (and in existence to this day), in which institution, the teaching of geography and astronomy was high on the list of priorities. Like their later-day interlocutor Lancelot Wilkinson (who I discussed at such length in chapter 3), the Serampore missionaries also had considerable respect for Hindu astronomy, which they enlisted as a strategic ally (to be eventually transcended, of course) in their quest to teach “the first principles” of European science in Bengali (and Sanskrit, in their college). However, in contrast to the ancient Hindu astronomical works which “though mixed with the most extravagant fancies, will long remain splendid monuments of the highest powers of intellect,” the “Geography of the pooranus [Puranas] is utterly contemptible.” Although one could rejoice that these “contemptible” texts—and the world maps that the Hindus “amused themselves by forming, according to the pooranus”—were not taught in existing schools, still the entire “monstrous” and “superstitious” edifice of Hinduism was built on these fundaments, and hence had to be undermined and undone.61 Not surprisingly, the earliest plan produced around 1814 to systematize the curriculum for their network of schools emphasized the teaching of:

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