1834.] On the Education of the Natives in Southern India. 352 



of pencil on the Hulligi or Kadala, which answers the purpose of 

 slates. The two latter in these districts are the most common. 

 One of these is a common oblong board, about a foot in width and 

 three feet in lengtli ; this board when planed smooth has only to be 

 smeared with a little rice and pulverized charcoal, and it is then fit 

 for use. The other is made of cloth, first stiffened with rice-water, 

 doubled into folds resembling a book, and it is then covered with a 

 composition of charcoal and several gums. The writing on either 

 of these may be effaced by a wet cloth. The pencil used is called 

 Bultapa, a kind of white clay substance, somewhat resembling a 

 crayon, with the exception of being rather harder. 



Having attained a thorough knowledge of the letters, the 

 scholar next learns to write the compounds, or the manner of 

 embodying the symbols of the vowels in the consonants, and the for- 

 mation of syllables (^tc, then the names of men, villages, animals, 

 &c., and lastly arithmetical signs. He then commits to memory an 

 addition table, and counts from one to 100, he afterwards writes easy 

 sums in addition and subtraction of money, multiplication and the 

 reduction of money, measures, &c. Here great pains are taken with 

 the scholar in teaching him the fractions of an integer, which de- 

 scend, not by tens as in our decimal fractions, but by fours, and 

 are carried to a great extent. In order that these fractions, together 

 with the arithmetical tables in addition, multiplication, and the 

 threefold measures of capacity, weight and extent, may be rendered 

 quite familiar to the minds of the scholars, they are made to stand up 

 twice a day in rows, and repeat the whole after one of the monitors. 



The other parts of a native education consist in decyphering vari- 

 ous kinds of hand-writing in public, and other letters which the 

 schoolmaster collects from different sources, writing common letters, 

 drawing up forms of agreement, reading fables and legendary tales 

 and committing various kinds of poetry to memory, chiefly with a 

 vievv' to attain distinctness and clearness in pronunciation, together 

 with readiness and correctness in reading any kind of composition.. 



The three books which are most common in all the schools, and 

 which are used indiscriminately by the several castes, are the Ra- 

 mayanum, Maha-Bharata and Bhagrata ; but the children of the 

 manufacturing class of people have, in addition to the above books 

 peculiar to their own religious tenets, such as the Nagalingayna, 

 Kutha, Vishvakurma Poorana, Kumalesherra , Ralikamahata ; 

 and those who wear the lingum, such as the Bawapoorana Rag- 



