Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/141

139, not in any learned scholastic tongue, but in vernacular dialects intelligible to the common people, and modiﬁed when necessary to suit local needs. It is probable that learning was fostered by the numerous monasteries, and that the boys—and girls in hundreds of villages learned their lessons from the monks and nuns, as they do now in Burma from the monks. Asoka, it should be noted, encouraged nunneries, and makes particular reference more than once to female lay disciples as well as to nuns. I think it likely that the percentage of literacy among the Buddhist population in Asoka's time was higher than it is now in many provinces of British India. The returns of 1901 show that in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, which include many great cities and ancient capitals, the number of persons per 1000 able to read and write amounts to only 57 males and 2 females. In Burma, where the Buddhist monasteries ﬂourish, the corresponding ﬁgures are 378 and 45. I believe that the Buddhist monasteries and nunneries in the days of their glory must have been, on the whole, powerful agencies for good in India, and that the disappearance of Buddhism was a great loss to the country.

Two scripts, as before observed, were in use. The Aramaic Kharoshthî, written from right to left, was ordinarily conﬁned to the north -western corner of India, but the scribe of the Brahmagiri version of the Minor Rock Edicts showed off his knowledge by writing part of his signature in that character. The Brâhmî script,