Premising that place of instruction as the primary site of reproduction of world views are crucial for study of meaning change in the science and that the roles of authorship, production, distribution and reception of works within particular sciences and particular periods are important to understand the history of science education, this study examines the scientific education in three types of modern schools, viz, Missionary, Government and Private vernacular schools in the Madras Presidency during the nineteenth century. Though inadequate and elementary, science was not totally absent from the scheme of school education in the Madras Presidency and the place of science in the vernacular education and the attended efforts in publications on science in the vernacular languages can be seen in the context of the socio-political dynamics of the nineteenth century Madras Presidency. This paper locates the place of natural sciences in the school education.

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In this paper, a survey of 180 inscriptions in Tamil between 1346 CE and 1400 CE is analysed for its notions and visualization of astral themes present in the epigraphical inscriptions as well as for the calendrical practices implicit in those inscriptions. I demonstrate the rich diversity of calendrical practices employed in this period. Although there are clear local usages, the applied methods of identification show that in several cases methods from other Indian calendrical traditions have also been used. This applies both to the year and the month. In contrast, the use of the weekday is not widely seen in the inscriptions of this region following the local system. The study also clarifies that the inscriptions are a useful documentary source for other astronomical observations such as eclipses and solstices undertaken in southern Indian locations in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

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